looking for something
by anna-garny
Summary: Starting around the end of Season 4, House comes into the clinic against his will, as usual, and picks up a file with 'J Cuddy' on the name tab. He can't help himself, he has to investigate. Chapter 13 and beyond are entirely new material.
1. Chapters 1 through 4

Before I begin- this is set just before the House's Head episode in Season 4. In my version, House has just narrowed his fellows down to the final 3 (Taub, Kutner, Thirteen) and Foreman has come back onto his staff. The key difference between this and canon is that instead of moving in with Amber, Wilson has bought his own place, having been unceremoniously dumped by Amber right after she gave him her ultimatum of 'Me or House.'

---

'Where can I find Dr Gregory House?' I asked the woman at the front desk of the Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital.

'It's 2 PM, he should be in the clinic, right through there. Be aware that it's a walk-in clinic, so you may have to wait if you want to see a specific doctor.'

'That's fine.' I turned and went through the door she had indicated, signed the register, picked up one of the forms that patients had to fill out and sat down on one of the typically uncomfortable chairs that lined the generic waiting room. Filling out a medical history and waiting for the name I had signed to be called, I considered again if this was a good idea or not. Realistically, what did I have to lose?

Then again, what did I have to gain?

Twenty minutes later, I had no choice. I heard the nurse call the name I'd signed on the register.

'Exam room two, Dr House will be with you in a moment.'

The dark-haired nurse in pink scrubs pointed to the door labelled 'TWO' and went back behind the desk, seeming somewhat exasperated.

I went into the room, considering my options for a place to sit. There was the bench in the corner which had a paper cover on it, the usual place for a patient to take a seat, but there was also a small swivelling stool on wheels in the corner next to the desk.

I sat on the stool, pulled a pen out of my pocket and started doodling on one of the tongue depressors that I'd pulled out of the jar.

'Miss... Cuddy?' he asked, somewhat incredulous, as he entered the room a few minutes later. He looked up, a half-smile on his face as he tapped the door closed with his cane.

'Are you serious? Any relation to the Dean of Medicine?'

'I just put Cuddy on the form to get your attention.'

He cocked an eyebrow.

'Why would you want to get my attention?'

'I needed to make sure that you were the doctor who saw me. I knew that if I put Cuddy on the form that you wouldn't be able to resist finding out if I was her sister or niece or something like that. Besides, Lisa told me that would probably be the best way to get what I want.'

'So you do know her.'

'We go way back.'

He leaned his cane against the exam bench and pulled himself up onto it, considering me, spinning his cane between his fingers.

'Who are you?'

'Jane Cuddy. Well, I suppose, if you won't believe that, I'm Jane Doe to you. My name isn't important, yet.'

'Why did you need to see me?' he was jiggling one foot, his left, and I noticed that his right hand was massaging his thigh.

'Sore?'

He stopped rubbing his leg and looked up at me.

'Not really.'

He slid a hand into his coat pocket, and I heard the familiar rattle of a pill bottle being shaken.

'You're lying. What are you taking for the pain?'

'Vicodin.' He extracted the bottle and showed it to me, popping the lid and downing a pill.

'What level of pain are we talking?'

'About a six, maybe a seven.' he told me, somewhat grudgingly. 'You still didn't answer my question.'

'I needed to see you about...' I paused, unsure of how to word this so that he wouldn't dismiss me at once.

I cleared my throat to cover the pause. 'I need to talk to you about my father.'

He looked at me, the eyebrow raised again.

'And who might he be, and why would I care?'

'His name is James Wilson. From what I've been told, you're his best friend.'

He stared at me for a long moment.

'You're... Wilson's kid?'

'That's what my birth certificate says. So does the DNA test that Dr Cuddy ran for me earlier this week.'

'You're what, 22, 23?'

'Twenty seven, actually, but thanks.'

'Wilson's only forty six, and his first marriage wasn't until he was started his internship.'

'He met my mom in college. They were together for a while, but she broke it off when he had his finals- she didn't want to be a distraction while he was trying to get into medical school.'

He kept staring at me, after about a minute it got unnerving. I was staring at the floor, the point where his cane was bouncing against the linoleum.

'Your dad bought me this.' he told me, indicating the cane. 'His dog chewed the handle off my old one, so I made him get me the most bitchin cane I could find.'

I was surprised how easily he accepted the fact that I was Dr Wilson's daughter. He kept studying me as I looked more closely at the cane, noticing the flames at the base.

'How come you don't think I'm lying?' I asked. 'I could just be saying this to get your attention. Pulling a scam.'

'You have his eyes.' He said plainly.

'Don't you want to know why I came to you before I went to him?'

'Don't care. Maybe you wanted to know what he'd be like from meeting me, maybe you're scared. Doesn't affect me.' He leaned over grabbed a paper cup from the dispenser, pouring himself some water and considering me from behind the lip of the cup.

I scooted over to the water cooler and poured my own drink, my mouth suddenly dry.

'Dr Cuddy told me not to judge him by you. In fact, she said that you were practically his polar opposite.'

He kept looking at me, his piercing blue eyes seeming to bore a hole through me. I remained silent for another minute, watching his expression, knowing that his curiosity would get the better of him eventually.

'Why did you look him up all of a sudden?'

'My mom died a few years ago. I always knew his name, but it's not like James Wilson is an unusual name. I had his middle name, too, but it wasn't until I found out which medical school he went to that I could narrow it down much farther, but after that all his positions were matters of public record. That's why I arranged to meet Dr Cuddy, and asked her to do the DNA test for me.'

'So Cuddy did all this, and told you about me, but didn't tell Wilson that he's got a twentysomething daughter?'

'I asked her not to. I'm planning on seeing him in the next few days.'

'I can page him right now if you'd like.' House started to dig in another pocket, pulling out a cell phone.

'Not right now!' I tried to inject some urgency into my voice and I must have succeeded, he looked up at me, finger poised on the 'call' button.

'Why not? You think a few days are going to make the shock any better? Personally, I'd want to tell him as soon as I could, especially after speaking to me. After all, I'm his best friend, who knows what I might let slip.'

I looked at him, and realised that he was definitely the kind of person to let something like this 'slip', just so he could see what kind of reaction he could get.

'You want to see what he does when he finds out.' I said, standing up from the stool and crossing the room, dropping my cup into the bin next to the door and leaning against the jamb, considering the gray-haired man sitting on the exam table.

He looked over at me, taking another sip from his cup before crumpling it up and tossing it towards me.

'Hell yeah! This is the kind of thing I've been waiting for since I met Wilson! I knew he had some skeletons in the closet, but had no idea that they were so good looking.'

I rolled my eyes, hearing the sarcasm, and nodded at his phone.

'Page him, but don't tell him who I am over the phone. You can be here for it, but you're not the one telling him.'

'I can't tell him anyway, you still haven't told me what your name is.'

'I knew there was a reason to keep that information to myself.' I grinned at him as he hit a speed dial button.

'Wilson? It's House. I need a consult in the Clinic. Exam room...' he looked at me, apparently blank.

I held up two fingers and mouthed 'Two.'

'Two. And hurry it up.'

I heard a tiny voice through the speakers, starting to object.

'Come on. Either you come down here or we come up to your office.'

His brow wrinkled as the voice kept objecting.

'Okay then, fine. She'll be in _my_office until you deem her important enough to talk to.'

He snapped the phone shut.

'Looks like you're coming upstairs. Follow me.' He slid his phone back into his pocket, swung himself off the bench and followed me out of the exam room, grabbing the case notes from the holder next to the door as we left.

He paused at the nurse's station to let them know that we were going to see another doctor for a consultation.

'Shouldn't your patient be in a wheelchair if she's being admitted?' the nurse asked.

'She's not being admitted, she's coming upstairs with me. Besides, I'm the cripple, so no, I'm not pushing her up to Wilson's office in a wheelchair. She can walk, better than I can, so she will.'

I smiled at the nurse, who just dismissed us as a pair of nuts, then followed House towards the elevators.

We were waiting for ours to descend when he asked a question, not looking at me.

'You said that you're twenty seven?'

'Yes, I did.'

'Most kids look for their missing parents when they_start_ college, after they've finished. Especially absent, doctor dads. Why now?'

'I didn't even know he was a doctor until about a year ago- too late to ask for college money when you're six months off paying out your student loans. I decided to wait until I had myself covered financially before I looked too seriously, the last thing I want is him to think I'm only after money.'

'That would make you vastly different to practically every other woman he's had in his life. In a good way.' House told me as the elevator arrived. He limped in after me, and I noticed that nobody else who had been waiting joined us in the box. He used his cane to push the 'three' button and the doors closed with a woosh.

---

We walked along a hallway, glass walls allowing a view of offices and wards, and House led me through a glass door with his name and 'DEPARTMENT OF DIAGNOSTIC MEDICINE' stencilled on at eye level.

'Diagnostic medicine, hey? Your profile says that your specialty is infectious diseases.'

He spun around at that, halfway across his office.

'One of my specialties, yes, but I'm a diagnostician by nature. Have a seat.' He gestured to the chair next to his desk as he walked around it, sitting down himself and picking up an over sized red and grey tennis ball in his left hand.

He considered me for a moment, before leaning backwards and lifting the receiver of his phone. He hit a speed dial and wedged the receiver between his ear and shoulder, tossing the ball into the air and leaning back to catch it.

'Wilson? The patient is in my office, whenever you get a minute.'

He looked over at me, rolling his eyes.

'I'm serious. She's here, tall, brown eyes, dark hair, les that go on for miles. I sure hope she's not terminal- Darwin would be appalled if this specimen didn't reproduce.' He paused again, and I could hear the same tiny voice on the other end of the line, apparently still objecting.

'Fine, fine. She says she's happy to wait. Just page me when you can come see her.' He hung the phone up.

'Apparently he's not available for another half hour or so. You'll be okay to wait here?'

'If I can get a coffee. Does your TV get cable?' I asked, pointing at the set behind his desk.

'Only basic.'

'Good enough for me, so long as I don't miss General Hospital.'

He was about to stand up when I made that comment, and I think that it made him stumble a little, because he sat back down, quite heavily.

'You're kidding? You watch General Hospital?'

'It must seem stupid, to a doctor...' I started.

'It's a good thing, because it means I've got an excuse to hang out here with you. I haven't seen it in a week, you'll be able to catch me up. The coffee's in there-' he pointed to what looked like a conference room-cum-library next door, I could see a kitchenette in the corner. '-I take mine black with two sugars. Make it strong.'

I stood up, smiling a little, and pushed through the glass door, wondering where the filters were kept.

'This is your idea of a consult?'

The voice made me spin in my chair. House and I had been engrossed in the show- I'd spent the first ten minutes explaining what had happened earlier in the week, then we'd fallen silent and our coffees had been forgotten as the storyline unfolded- it was a Friday, so we were in for a cliff-hanger ending.

'Wilson! Took you long enough. This is-' I stood up and cut him off, holding out a hand to shake Dr Wilson's.

'I'm Ryan Dalton.' I filled in for House, who stayed in his seat, a somewhat expectant look on his face.

'Nice to meet you, Ryan. You needed a consult?' he glanced over my shoulder at House, who shrugged.

'She asked to see you, so I obliged.' House leaned back, crossing his feet at the ankles, hands behind his head, waiting for the fireworks to start.

Wilson turned to face me, still gripping my hand.

'You asked to see me?'

'Yes, I did.' I let go of his hand, stepped back and took a seat. Almost unconsciously, he mirrored my actions, spinning a chair around to face me.

'Why?' He had an open, honest face. House was right, I had his eyes. It was almost spooky, like looking into a mirror, albeit with bushier eyebrows.

I decided to bite the bullet and tell him before the urge overcame House to blurt out the news.

'I'm your daughter.'

---

Wilson sat there for a moment, his mouth half open, staring at me. His eyes flicked to House, who must have been grinning, then back to me.

'You're kidding...' he drifted off, one hand coming up to run through his hair. He looked over at House, and his eyes narrowed.

'You _are_kidding. This is some kind of joke, you're trying to set me up. Find a patient in the clinic who looks a bit like me and drag her up here to try and freak me out.'

I looked at him, completely understanding his reaction, but not able to be totally unhurt by it.

'Dr Cuddy did a DNA test for me, a week ago. She confirmed it. I- I met House down in the clinic because I didn't know how else to see you- there was no way I could get an appointment, unless I was terminal or something.'

I glanced at House, who had his hands up in an 'I'm innocent' gesture, then looked back at Dr Wilson.

'You're sure?' he asked, seeming to still be in shock.

'Here.' I opened the file House had set on the desk- it was genuinely my medical records- and pulled out the copies of my birth certificate and the DNA results. I handed them to him and he examined the sheets, his mouth hanging open again.

'How did Cuddy get my DNA...?'

'She said something about being discreet, mentioned the cafeteria.' I told him. In fact, Dr Cuddy had explained exactly to me how she had swiped one of his coffee cups after lunch one day, and run the labs herself, using a false name for Dr Wilson until she confirmed that he was my biological father.

He looked up from the papers, first at me, then at House.

'If this all turns out to be some kind of elaborate scam, House, I will personally shred that motorcycle.' his voice was low, gravelly, but his eyes never left the paperwork.

House didn't seem concerned, as if threats of property damage were normal, and shrugged.

'I believed her as soon as she told me. She's got your eyes, Jimmy.'

Dr Wilson looked at me again, and swallowed hard.

'How is-' he glanced at the birth certificate. 'Adriana. Adriana Dalton. I was a junior at McGill when we dated. She never even said...'

'She never knew, until after she'd gone home for the summer.' It was my turn to swallow and feel awkward. 'She died when I was nineteen. I t was a car accident, on her way to pick me up from the airport at Thanksgiving.'

'Oh.' There wasn't really much more he could say.

After about a ten second pause, it all seemed to become too much for Dr House.

'Come on, Wilson, surely you've got more than that!'

'House, this is all a hell of a lot to take in.' Wilson snapped at him- the reaction was almost automatic.

'Well, you must be a bit curious about her?'

Wilson shook his head, looking at the patch of floor between his feet.

'Well, if you won't, then I will. What college did you go to? What was your major?'

'I went to NYU, my grandmother lives in Washington Heights so I commuted to my classes. Ironically enough, I took pre-med, and graduated from Yale Medical school eighteen months ago. I've got an apartment just off campus up there, and I just finished my internship at the hospital.'

'What specialty?' House narrowed his eyes at me.

'Internal medicine- haematology.'

He snorted, leaned over, and poked Dr Wilson in the ribs with his cane.

'Hear that? She's a blood doctor.' He seemed amused at my career path.

'I heard her, House. Look, would you mind leaving?'

I thought for a moment he was talking to me, but then he raised his head and glared at House.

'Are you telling me to leave my own office?' House was incredulous.

'Yes.'

House stared at him for a moment, then lifted himself out of his chair.

'Fine then, I'll be in _your_ office.' He stomped out of the room, turning right and limping away down the corridor.

---

'So, Ryan.' James Wilson looked at me, and couldn't seem to find the words.

'It's okay, Dr Wilson, I'm not expecting anything from you.' I told him, leaning back and relaxing a little now that House was out of the room.

'Call me James.' He smiled at me. 'I'm your father. You don't have to call me 'Doctor', Dr Dalton.'

'I haven't even started a proper fellowship yet- the internship was part of the conditions of one of my student loans.' I laughed, and he laughed with me. The atmosphere changed, and suddenly he was back together.

'Well, I can't just sit here in House's office with you. Do you have plans for dinner?'

'No, I don't.'

'Well, I finish at about five. It's only three now, but I'm sure that you can find something interesting to read in there.' he jerked a thumb over his shoulder to the conference room. 'I'll come find you when I'm done for the day and we can talk more over dinner.'

'Sounds great.' I was genuinely happy with the suggestion, it would mean a less formal environment and hopefully a less public one.

He stood up, and I held out my hand to shake his again. He took it, looking at them, then pulled me up out of my chair and hugged me.

'A daughter.' He muttered into my shoulder. 'I never thought I would have a daughter.'

I pressed my face into his lab coat, feeling a few tears escaping. He gripped me tighter, seeming to know that was what I needed, before he released me.

'There's a bathroom down the hall, if you need it. I've got an appointment now, but I'll be back in a couple of hours.'

He leaned over and kissed my cheek, then left the office, turning in the same direction Dr House had, and I stared at the space he had vacated, feeling like I'd achieved something very important.

---

A few minutes later I had made myself another coffee, and was sitting at the conference table, reading a report on a study about plasmophoresis and the prospect of using it to treat certain types of leukaemia.

'Hi.' A short, balding guy with a rather large nose had come in, followed by another guy with dark hair and a cheeky grin, a tall, black guy with intense eyes and a girl with one eyebrow cocked and a pen through the ponytail at the nape of her neck. The girl had spoken to me, and the guys had just taken their seats up the other end of the table.

'Hi.' I turned back to the article, not knowing who they were, or particularly caring.

'Alright, kids, twenty-seven year old male presents with tiredness, aching joints and partial blindness in one eye. The blindness has only happened this morning, and he's describing it as a moving black dot that travels with his vision. Differential diagnosis.' It was Dr House, who didn't comment on my presence in the room as he picked up a whiteboard marker and wrote the symptoms onto the whiteboard near the door to his office.

The other three hesitated, then the girl spoke up.

'Who _are_ you?' she asked me.

House answered for me.

'This is Dr Dalton, she's going to be helping with today's differential. She's a friend of mine, a haematologist.'

They seemed to accept that, but the girl was still wary.

'He's got a family history of chronic fatigue, his mother and grandfather both had it. That could explain the joints and the fatigue.' The balding guy suggested.

'But not the blindness.' the dark haired one put in. 'Has anyone looked at the retinas? Anything to indicate trauma to the eye? If the cornea's got something stuck in it that could cause a tracking black spot.'

'No trauma, nothing visible causing the spot. There haven't been any neurological symptoms, either.' he said to the black guy, who had opened his mouth to say something. House turned to the girl. 'Thirteen?'

The girl looked up, startled. She'd been staring at me, and I'd stared back, still listening to the conversation, while she had apparently lost track.

'What can cause a tracking black spot, other than trauma to the eye?' House asked.

I watched her flounder for a few moments, and decided to put her out of her misery by voicing my own opinion.

'What was on his blood work? Sickle-cell anaemia can cause clots, which can lead to tracing spots if they happen in the optic blood vessels. It could explain his aches and the tiredness as well, especially if it's been misdiagnosed in the past or he's been skipping his treatments.'

'Nothing in the history indicates anything in the anaemia family.' The dark haired guy told me.

'And there's no blood work yet- we haven't taken any. In fact, there's no blood work in here full stop.' the black guy said, flicking through the file.

'Ok, I want you to take another look at the eye, Taub, the guys in the ER probably missed something.' House told the balding guy, who stood up and left the room. 'Kutner, you get some blood,' The dark haired guy left. 'Foreman, schedule an MRI- the eye thing could still be neurological even if there's no other symptoms, yet.' The black guy left, shooting me another glance as he did.

The girl, Thirteen, he'd called her, stayed in her seat as the guys left the room.

'What can I do?' she asked him, seeming a bit put out that the boys had all been sent on errands for the patient and she'd been left behind.

'You are going to take Dr Dalton on a tour of the facility, get her acquainted with her new workspace. She's going to be starting a fellowship with Dr Mason down in Pathology soon, so she needs to get to know her way around. Get her a parking permit, too.'

'Okay...' she stood up and I joined her, trying not to smirk at House's audacity, pretending I was a new pathology fellow.

'Dr Dalton, just a second.' House called me back as I reached the door. Thirteen stayed in the hall, and I went back to where House was leaning against the kitchenette.

'I really did get you an offer on that fellowship. One of the new kids gave notice on Tuesday so there's an opening. I told Mason that you would be ideal, and that Wilson would give you a reference if I wasn't good enough. Mason owes me a favour, so the spot's yours, if you want it.'

I gave him a half-grin, not really able to believe that he'd done something like that.

'I wasn't coming here looking for a job.' I said, a little defensive.

'Well, you can't exactly live on nothing, and it's not like this is a bad place to do a pathology fellowship. Go on, or she'll think you're my new girlfriend.' he waved his cane in the general direction of Thirteen, who was hovering in the hallway, watching us through the vertical blinds.

'Thanks.' I said to House, briefly reached out and touched his arm, then left the conference room, following Thirteen as she showed me around the place.

---

It was around five fifteen when I came back into House's office, having been in the locker rooms with Thirteen when her beeper went off, racing with her to the patient's room as he had a seizure, had some Lorazapam administered and proceeded to go into anaphylactic shock. Once I'd stabbed the EPI into his leg, Thirteen had paged House to let him know that the patient was stable, and he called us back into the conference room.

After an MRI had revealed nothing unusual going on in the patient's brain, House ordered a lumbar puncture in case it was an infection causing whatever was going on, and it was while Kutner was doing it that I realised how late it was.

I left the patient's room quietly, and made my way back to House's office, finding him sitting at his desk, my father there with him, shuffling a deck of cards.

'I was just about to page you, but realised I didn't have your number.' House said.

'You could have paged Thirteen, she was in the same room.' I said, shrugging off the lab-coat I had swiped from the coat-rack in House's office before following the team to the MRI room, wanting to at least look a little professional if I was going to be 'working' with them- the patient's girlfriend had been appalled when an apparently random civilian had plunged an adrenaline shot into her partners' thigh. The lab-coat had House's nametag on it, which I had quickly pocketed when the patients' girlfriend asked if I was 'The doctor who is supposed to be treating him without having even met him.'

'You've been helping his team?' James seemed amused.

'She was bored, Jimmy. You didn't even leave her anyone to play with. I told him about the fellowship offer.' House mentioned.

James looked up at me, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

'Is that okay with you?'

'It sounds great. If there was a space for another fellow with Dr House, I'd take that, but a spot in pathology is a good second option.'

'I don't think Cuddy would be able to fit another fellow into the budget- he's been through a few in the last couple of months.'

'Thirteen and Kutner mentioned the elimination rounds while we were doing the MRI- they seemed a bit pissed that I was helping them out without having gone through that.' I said, pulling up a chair at the end of the desk. House dealt the cards, apparently we were playing Texas Hold 'Em, and I checked what he'd dealt me.

About ten hands later I'd managed to win about a hundred bucks off each of them, and the door to House's office opened.

'The LP's just gone to the lab- we'll have the results in 48 hours.' It was Thirteen, who seemed surprised to see me sitting between House and Wilson, the deck of cards in my hands- it was my turn to deal.

'Great. Go home, get some sleep, let the others know that we're done for the day. I'll page you if I need you back anytime over the weekend.' She nodded and left, giving me a funny look as she did.

House stood up three hands later and reached for his jacket.

'So, Wilson, where are you taking us for dinner?'

Wilson looked up from the dollar notes he was counting from the hand he'd just won.

'_Us_?'

'Yes, _us_. You're not the only one interested in what Dalton's got to say.'

'Ryan and I are having dinner at the Italian place near my new apartment. You, I assume, will eat whatever take-out is easiest to carry whilst riding a motorcycle.'

'Aw, come on, can't I come? I bought you lunch yesterday!'

'With money you'd borrowed from me that morning. You're not coming.'

'You know I'll just follow you. Hope you made reservations for three.'

Wilson's shoulders dropped, defeated. He stood up as well, shrugging into his own blazer as I pushed my chair back into the conference room.

'Come on, the reservation is for six thirty- and I did make it a table for three.'

I got the feeling that this was a regular occurrence, House's gleeful attitude indicated that this wasn't the first 'private dinner' that he'd crashed.

'You ride a motorbike?' I asked as we got into the elevator, noting House's leather jacket and the helmet dangling from his non-cane hand.

'It's orange.' James told me, House shot me a grin over his shoulder.

'Want to ride with me to the restaurant?'

'House!' Wilson seemed appalled at the thought.

'Is yours the one in the handicapped parking space?' I asked, remembering what had been in the parking lot.

'That would be mine.'

'I parked next to you.' I told him, waiting for the realization to hit James.

'But, the only spaces near there are-' he stopped mid-sentence. The parking spaces right next to the handicapped zone were small yellow rectangles specifically for other motorbikes.

'Mine's purple.' I told them. 'And my helmet's in the compartment under the dickie seat.' I explained, before either of them could ask.

House turned to look at Wilson as we left the elevator.

'It's like she's your kid, with my attitude.' he said, sounding somewhat triumphant.

'Ryan, you can come in my car, you don't have to ride your bike...' James tried to object, somewhat fruitlessly.

'Actually, Dr House, if I could ride with you? I haven't been backseat on a bike in years.'

'Or you could piggyback your dad- save us having to wait for him to find a park.' House suggested, holding open the main door of the hospital for us to leave.

We both looked at James, who was suddenly very pale, pausing halfway out the door. I caught House's eye, and he laughed.

'It's okay, James,' I said, stifling a giggle of my own. 'I'll ride with House and you can drop me back here after dinner so I can get to my hotel.'

James seemed to accept that as a compromise, but watched a little nervously as I unlocked my bike's seat and extracted my black full-face helmet from the compartment that kept it.

House was on his bike and had it started by the time I had my helmet on. My purse was strapped over my shoulder inside my jacket, my cell phone, wallet and iPod all in there.

I swung a leg over the back of the bike, sliding forward so I was snug against House's back, wrapped my arms around his chest and held on.

'See you at the restaurant!' House said, revving the bike and taking off with a slight spin of the tyres.

I caught a glimpse of my dad shaking his head a little, turning and walking towards a row of boring-looking sedans.

---

House weaved through the traffic like a pro, even with my added weight on the bike. I was perceptive and confident enough that I was able to keep up with his movements as we zig-zagged along towards the same area of town my hotel was in, and after barely five minutes on the road, House pulled the bike up on the pavement outside a tiny Italian restaurant, flicked the engine off and waited for me to disengage before getting off himself, unclipping his cane from where he'd stored it for the journey.

I took my helmet off and shook my hair out, and caught House looking at me speculatively.

'You certainly are a surprising girl.'

'Thank-you, Greg.' I used his first name now that we were away from the hospital, and although his eyes widened a little, he let it slide.

'Come on, I'll bet he's even got us a bottle of wine waiting.'

'Naughty, mixing Vicodin and alcohol.'

'I could say the same of you- five sugars in your coffee to level out your blood sugar rather than having juice.'

'Hey, I was stressed.'

'Just don't tell Wilson about the diabetes _or_ the migraines or he'll put you through the pancreatic cancer wringer.'

I looked at him out of the corner of my eye, wondering when he'd found time to actually read my file, and let it slide. We told the maitre'd the name the table was under and were led to our seats in the middle of the place. I immediately felt underdressed- it had been okay to be in jeans and an open-collared shirt at the hospital- they'd been covered with the labcoat, but not here.

Greg wasn't concerned, he was in a rumpled green shirt, a leather jacket and scruffy jeans. He set his helmet down under his seat and shrugged out of his jacket. I followed suit, hanging my Kevlar-lined denim jacket over the back of my own chair. A few seconds later a waiter appeared, pouring us water and asking if we wanted to order drinks or wait for our other guest.

'I'll have a Miller Lite, she'd like the sauvignon blanc, and a merlot for the latecomer.' House answered before I could open my mouth.

I looked at him as the waiter trotted off.

'How did you-'

'Chardonnay's too sweet, and the other options are swill. At least the blanc has a nice woody edge to it. Here's daddy!'

James looked up at us from the entrance and gave us a pained smile as House's comment carried across the entire place. It was mostly empty, but I got the feeling that Wilson was still a little uncomfortable.

'I ordered you a merlot.' House told him as Wilson took his seat on my other side. It felt a little strange, having dinner with two men twice my age, who I had only met that afternoon, no less. But I let myself relax, enjoying their banter as James objected to Greg's choice of wine, until the waiter delivered it, at which point he shut up.

We talked through most of dinner, keeping topics relatively neutral. I got to know a little more about James' work, his specialty and, thanks to House, his love life. It certainly was an insight to learn about his three failed marriages, and that I was, to his knowledge, the only child he had. House also kept mentioning a woman who he referred to as 'Cut-throat Bitch,' but every time that subject came up James fell silent and gave Greg a look that could have melted steel.

When dinner was over, and House had wrestled the check away from James, my father offered to take me back to the hospital to pick up my ride.

'Well, my hotel's only up the block. I could walk up there tonight and catch a cab back in the morning to get my bike.'

'Don't be stupid. Come on, you're both coming back to my place for poker.' House told us. 'I've got to win that hundred back from you, Dalton.'

James looked over at me.

'It is Friday night.' he admitted.

'Sounds good.' I smiled at both of them, and House grinned back. Wilson was a little more reserved, but seemed pretty enthusiastic about the idea of poker.

I ended up being taken to House's place on the back of the bike, James, it emerged, drove a blue Volvo. It was almost scarily safe and sensible. I just shook my head when he parked it across the road from House's apartment, I was sitting on the stoop with a beer in one hand and my cell phone in the other when he pulled up.

'Grace has been trying to call me. I'll be inside in a second.'

'Grace?'

'My roommate- I told her I'd be back today or tomorrow and forgot to call and let her know that it won't be until tomorrow at the earliest.'

'Ok.' He patted my shoulder and went inside. I could hear House playing his piano, he'd started as soon as I'd excused myself to check my cell messages, and heard him refuse to get up and open the door when James knocked- I'd left it unlocked.

---

They each managed to lose another $100 to me before they gave up on poker- House turned the TV on and checked his TiVo.

James sat down on the opposite end of the couch to House, leaving the middle cushion for me. I was thinking about the situation- my newly-found father and his somewhat eccentric best friend, and thinking just how uncomfortable it _should_have been, when it really wasn't. I felt like I'd done this every weekend of my adult life, and from the way the two of them bickered over the remote I got the feeling that it was pretty normal for them, too.

---

'Is she asleep?' House's voice rattled across my consciousness, but I kept my eyes closed.

'I think so. Are you okay with her staying here? I could wake her up...'

'Leave her, it's been a long day. Hey- maybe she knows how to make pancakes!'

'With what? Since I moved out you've lived on take out and tinned food.' I had been leaning on James while we watched TV and had eventually wound up with my head on his shoulder and my eyes sliding closed.

'I do have _some_food in the house.' House muttered as he moved off the end of the couch, gently lifting my feet up to where his residual body heat was still radiating out of the couch.

James didn't seem to want to move for fear of waking me up.

'Here.' House (I assume) laid a blanket over me, and I felt James start to move. He was very careful not to disturb me too much, sliding a pillow under my head as he stood up.

I shifted slightly to make myself more comfortable and let sleep take over.

---

I woke up the next morning with the sun in my eyes. I could hear House snoring somewhere else in the apartment, sat up and wondered where the bathroom was.

About an hour later I was back stretched out on the couch, watching cartoons, when I heard a door slam somewhere in the apartment.

House was limping down the hallway, in a black t-shirt and pale, striped pyjama pants.

'Morning, sunshine.' he greeted me. I pulled my legs up to give him some space on the couch- at some stage the night before someone had taken my shoes off for me, but I was still in my jeans and the same shirt I'd had on the day before. 'Sleep well?' he asked, settling down in the spot I'd removed my feet from.

'Your couch is lumpy as hell.'

'Yeah, your dad hates it.'

'He's slept here?'

'During his last divorce he needed a place to crash for a while, so I let him have the couch.'

'That explains a lot.' I stretched my legs out in front of me, and House hooked one of my ankles with his cane and pulled my feet into his lap.

For a moment I pretended to ignore it, then allowed myself to relax, leaving the remote on my leg as we continued to watch cartoons in companionable silence.

---

I think it was about another hour later that James arrived, we were still stretched out on the couch, tuned in to Nickelodeon.

'Morning, family.' James greeted us, looking calm and collected- he had a pair of dark jeans and a pale blue t-shirt on, a sack full of groceries in his arms.

'Hey, Jimmy.' Greg leaned back against the couch, one hand resting on my ankles, the other arm stretched along the back of the sofa.

'Sleep okay, Ryan?'

'The couch is lumpy.'

'I know, I spent a few nights there myself. You might need to invest in a fold-out at this rate.' James directed that comment at Greg, who gave him an indignant snort.

'You two are the only people who've slept over in the last five years. I'm not getting a new couch.'

James went over to the piano and sat on the stool, glancing at the TV.

'What are you two watching?' he asked after a moment.

'Ren and Stimpy.' House said, not looking at him.

'Have you had breakfast?'

'No.' we answered in unison.

James sighed.

'It's a good thing I always come prepared.'

'You were a Boy Scout?' House asked, just as I opened my mouth to voice that very question.

'No, but I knew that you had nothing edible, and presumed that breakfast would be appreciated. Pans still in the same cupboard?'

'Now, why would I rearrange my kitchen? Of course.' House didn't seem to mind James taking over the kitchen, in fact, when I watched James making preparations, pulling ingredients out of the paper sack he'd bought in with him, he seemed to know exactly where everything was.

The three of us were sitting at the kitchen table a few minutes later, House muttering something about '...not as good as the macadamia ones.' while James served plain vanilla pancakes. He'd even bought syrup with him, which he set down on the table and House grabbed before I could even make a move towards it.

It was the second meal in a row I'd had with these two men- and they both seemed to regard it as perfectly normal. After a few minutes I wrestled the syrup away from House, even after he'd soaked his pancakes he still clung to the bottle, and James made a very strange comment.

'You moved the bottle out of the saucepan.'

'No, I _finished_ the bottle I kept in the saucepan.'

'Really? How much are you taking?'

'No more than eighty migs a day. I'm fine.'

'Your prescription is for half that!'

'Which is why I finished the bottle that I kept in the saucepan.'

'You're hopeless.' I muttered, directing it at both of them.

That made them look at me, syrup dribbling down House's chin, James pausing with his fork halfway to his mouth.

'What? You argue like an old married couple.' I said, holding my free hand in the air in a 'no offence' gesture.

House laughed a little, and James just shook his head.

After breakfast, House stood up and went into his room, coming back a few minutes later with a large black towel, a dark grey t-shirt and a pair of jeans which he tossed in my general direction.

'I'm assuming you'll want a shower? Those ought to fit you- I figured you'd want a change of clothes.'

'I was thinking I could wait until I got back to my hotel...'

'By the time I get you back there you'll have enough time to grab your bag and check out. Take a shower here and we can talk about what's your plan is once you're done.'

He poked me with his cane so I'd get off the couch, and I went into the bathroom, unable to stop myself from smiling.

'You don't mind if I use your conditioner?' I called through the apartment as I turned the water on.

'Just stay away from the medicine cupboard. The label might be asprin, but it's probably a narcotic.' James shouted back over the TV and running water.

Surprisingly enough, House's jeans and top fit me okay- he was bigger in the waist than he looked- and I always carried a spare set of underwear in my purse, something my mother had instilled in me from the first weekend I went away to college. The jeans were a little long, but I still had my steel capped boots and when I pulled them on the denim just bagged a little at my feet.

---

On the back of House's bike again I discovered that he took the corners far too fast for first thing in the morning, and pulled up outside the hotel with a skid.

'Go on, I'll wait here.'

I went into the lobby, helmet under my arm, and up to the room I'd paid for and not even slept in. My bag was still on the end of the bed, and I decided if I was going to pay for the room I might as well raid it- I emptied the minibar of its' candy and swiped the complimentary flip-flops from the end of the bath. I went back down to the lobby to check out, watching House out of the corner of my eye as he leaned against his bike, helmet dangling from the handlebar. People seemed to be going out of their way to avoid him- he was the only unmoving person on the entire sidewalk.

I finished checking out and crossed the pavement to stand next to him, unzipping my backpack and sliding my purse into the side pocket, rearranging my things to accommodate it.

'Wilson wanted me to take you to his place. Do you need to pick up your bike? You said your roommate was expecting you back tonight sometime.'

'That's okay, it's only a few hours on the bike, I can go straight home from the hospital sometime this afternoon. How's your patient?'

'Just got a page- turns out you were right about skipping the anaemia meds- he was trying some alternative therapies and one of them poisoned him- which led to the eye issue and the seizure. He's back on the right combination and he'll be discharged this afternoon.'

'Why wasn't there any blood-work in the file?'

'He used a fake name- apparently the medication he was on as a kid led to some embarrassing problems in the bedroom when he hit puberty. He didn't want us to put him back on the anaemia meds because of that, so I ordered him a script for the little blue helper pills and told him to only take a half at a time.'

'Very sensible.' I donned my helmet and tightened the straps on my backpack as House started the bike again, this time heading in a different direction, presumably towards my dad's place.

---

We were sitting on the stoop, waiting for him to arrive, when House asked me a question I hadn't been expecting.

'Why did you say yes to the job?'

I looked at him, confused.

'Because I'm fresh out of my internship, and it's a good position.'

'But you might hate Wilson. You might never want to see him again after you've gotten to know him. Why put yourself in a position to be in the same building as him every day, when it might be a mistake?'

'How many of the pathology fellows do you know by first name? Or by last name for that matter?' I asked.

It was House's turn to stare at me, blank.

'Exactly. I might be in the same building, but it's not like I'm in his department, working directly for him. If I want to avoid him, I can, and if I want to see him, this just makes it easier.'

'So, if you're starting in two days, where are you going to stay while you find a place? You can't just expect him to put you up.'

'I could stay on your couch for a while longer.' I told him, making him raise an eyebrow at my forwardness.

'Thirteen already thinks there's something going on- if you stayed at my place she'd be certain we were sleeping together.'

'So what? Since when do you care what people think? Besides, if I'm sleeping with you, then I can't be Wilson's daughter, and can't be getting preferential treatment as a new member of staff because my Daddy's the head of a department.'

He thought for a moment.

'Well, we should at least run this by Wilson before you take up residence on my couch. Preferably before he asks you what colour you'd like to paint his guest room.'

'Who's painting what now?' James had come around the corner as House had made his last comment.

'Nothing, except maybe your windowsills- they're flaking a bit. Hurry up and open the door, my leg's killing me from all this sitting on concrete.'

I raised the topic of my new job as I was helping James unpack the groceries he'd bought home, while House flicked through the TiVo, having flopped down on the couch.

'So, it looks like I'll need to move down here, if I'm going to be working at the hospital.'

'Looks like it. If you need a place to stay, while you're looking for an apartment, if you want to get an apartment, I've got a guest bedroom that's being used as storage at the moment.'

'House said I could stay on his couch for a while longer if I needed to.'

'Oh.' James looked hurt by that, and I could well understand.

'I don't want to just assume that you'll let me move in here, because we're related, because you've got some weird kind of guilt thing going that makes you feel responsible for me.'

'I don't feel guilty; I just know how crappy that couch is to sleep on. I've got a fold-out bed in the lounge, and even if you only stay here for a few weeks, you can help me sort out the stuff in the room, maybe help decorate it. I think there's a bed in there, under all the junk.'

I looked over at him, and realised that even if he hadn't been my father, if he'd met me and taken a liking to me, and I needed a place to crash, he'd be more than willing to help me out. I smiled at him, and he smiled back, and I began to realise just how lucky I was in the man that was my biological father.

'She's staying here, isn't she? You should see if that spare bed actually exists, Wilson!' House called from the lounge.

'Not tonight!' I told him, coming out of the kitchen and shoving him to one side so I could actually sit on the couch. 'I've got to get back to Yale tonight and talk to Grace, tell her about the position, that I'm moving, arrange some stuff.'

'You'll be okay to do that yourself?' James seemed concerned.

'I moved from New York to Yale by myself, this isn't much farther. Besides, I need some more clothes if I'm starting on Monday. If I like the job, I can get the rest shipped and sort out furniture and stuff once I've got a place.'

'And if you don't like the job?'

'Then I'll look for something else. No biggie.' I elbowed House again, making him grumble and shift further up the couch.

Later that afternoon, once we'd had chicken enchiladas for lunch and House had tried again to win some of his cash back from me (I fleeced him of another 80 bucks before he gave up), James offered to take me back to the hospital so that I could get to Yale before dark.

---

I got out of the car as James stopped the engine, opened the back door and pulled my backpack and helmet out.

He rounded the hood to talk to me as I checked the contents of my backpack and zipped it up.

'So, you really think this is a good idea?'

'It's a good position. If I'd been offered it by _anyone_ then I would have jumped at it. The fact that it's close to you, and that I can stay with you rather than in a hotel while I find an apartment, is a bonus.'

He looked awkward, like he wanted to say something but didn't know how to. I decided to just take care of it, stepped forward and caught him in a hug.

After a few seconds I stepped back, and his eyes were big and wet.

'It's been great to meet you, James. I'll be back sometime tomorrow afternoon. You've given me your address, and directions to get back there. I've got your cell number and you've got mine, we'll be fine.'

'See you tomorrow, Ryan.' He hugged me again, then stood back and leaned against the hood of his Volvo as I crossed the car park and swung a leg over my purple motorcycle.

---

Grace was somewhat speechless when I told her what had happened.

'He met you, what, yesterday? And he's already got you a job lined up and a place to stay down in Jersey?'

'Well, his friend got me the job- he's just offered me his spare room while I look for a place.'

'Sounds like you hit the jackpot as far as absent daddies go- most turn out to be deadbeats.'

'He's really nice, an oncologist. His place is still a bit of a shambles, but I think he's only been there a few months, and he works a lot.'

'Your dad is a cancer doctor? He must be loaded!'

'He's had three failed marriages- I think most of the 'loaded' bit went down the drain in alimony.'

'But he's still nice? And his friend sounds cool.'

'House...' I drifted off. House was an anomaly. I genuinely liked James, he was a lovely guy, but House was a puzzle. 'House is cool. He's got some boundary issues, but other than that, he's pretty normal.'

'What do you mean, boundary issues?'

'Well, James and I went out to dinner, and House came with us- threatened to follow us and crash it if we didn't include him, actually. I slept over at his place last night-'

'You slept with your newly-found dad's best friend?' Grace butted in, eyes wide.

'No, I slept on his _couch_. I fell asleep while they were watching the New Yankee Workshop. James made us breakfast, then we went to his place, and I made lunch. He took me back to the hospital to pick up my bike and I came here. I'm packing some bags tonight and going back to his place in the morning, and I start on Monday in the pathology lab at Princeton Plainsboro.'

'These two are _doctors,_ and they watch the New Yankee Workshop?'

'House said something about an imbecile combined with power tools and eventual hilarity. It was pretty funny, but I was shredded and fell asleep on the couch. They just left me there- House took me to James' place this morning.'

'Didn't you say he walks with a cane? How does he drive?'

'He rides a motorbike, actually.'

She grinned at me.

'What did your doctor dad say when he saw yours?'

'He went a bit pale, but didn't say anything about it. I think he's decided not to be too judgemental before he gets to know me. He was concerned about me being on the road when it was getting dark, but I sent him a text when I got here to let him know I wasn't splattered across the freeway.'

Grace reclined on the couch as I dug around in my closet, finding my big backpack and picking out some clothes that would be appropriate for a pathology fellow. I knew from the look of James' shirts that he would have an ironing board, so I rolled up a few pairs of pants, some shirts and my two blazers, some pyjamas and my favourite casual clothes. I was still in the shirt and pants House had loaned me, something Grace hadn't commented on or hadn't noticed. I had taken some clothes with me, but it had been easier to keep House's jeans on to travel home rather than fussing around changing at James' place.

---

The next afternoon I was covered in dust, helping James clear out his spare bedroom. It emerged that most of the boxes were full of things that he either thought he had thrown out, or hadn't realised his last wife had allowed him to keep. There was a substantial record collection, some really nice cufflinks, and a complete dinner set, silverware, crockery and serving plates. James had been living with three plates, a mug and some borrowed cutlery, and suddenly had so much kitchenware that he didn't know where to put it.

I got the feeling that he appreciated my help- some of the boxes had wedding photo albums in them- he let me sort through those- and I found some photos of James as a much younger man, even some baby photos, in between the wedding snaps.

I pulled all the photos out of the albums, sorting the prints into two piles, and asked James what he wanted me to do with the wedding-and-wife photos.

'Toss them in here.' he held out a green garbage bag.

'Are you sure?'

'She told me that she burned all of hers. What's the point in keeping mine?'

I threw them in the bin, then tore off the '_Our Wedding'_ stickers on the cover and began rearranging the photos in the album in what I assumed was chronological order.

We ended up with five big green bags full of trash, which we hauled into the alley and up into the dumpster, and went back inside to find a very empty and much larger spare bedroom.

'I forgot how big this room was.' James murmured, looking at the bare floorboards and large picture window. It had a built-in wardrobe, but that had been largely empty- I got the feeling that he had just dumped his boxes in the room when he'd moved in and not even looked at options to keep them neat.

He sat down against the far wall, a shaft of sunlight hitting his hair and illuminating his face. He looked years younger- and a smile crept across his features as I watched him from my spot in the doorway.

'I've been meaning to do that for months.' he said, grinning up at me.

'Glad I could help.'

He looked me up and down, and the smile faded a little.

'You're still wearing House's jeans.' he commented.

It was true- I'd pulled them on because they were the nearest item to me when I'd woken up at six that morning. I had his shirt in my backpack, which was on the end of the sofa in the lounge room behind me. I was actually surprised that he hadn't noticed earlier- but when I'd arrived he had been starting with the boxes, so I'd just jumped right in and we'd been busy all morning.

'I just grabbed them this morning. Figured I should probably wash them before I gave them back, so I might as well get some wear out of them. They're quite comfy.'

His smile returned, and he raised one eyebrow.

'You are so much like him, if you didn't have the same eyes as me-'

'Don't forget the handwriting!' we had discovered some further similarities earlier in the day- I'd been labelling the Goodwill bags when he'd noticed the writing thing.

'-if not for those things, I'd think you were his daughter, not mine.'

'Maybe that's why you like him so much, you subconsciously tried to substitute for me.'

'Ryan, I didn't know you even existed until two days ago.'

'Well, I can hope.'

I crossed the room and sat down next to him, stretching my legs out in front of me and considering the room as it was.

'It's quite a nice colour already.' I commented. All of the records were in his bookshelves in the den, his photo albums in the cabinet next to the TV, the clothes that he was keeping were in the hamper to be taken to the laundromat, and the rest of them either in the dumpster at the back of the building, or tied up in canvas bags next to the front door, waiting to be taken to Goodwill. The room was a pale cream colour with polished floorboards, dark gold curtains and a plain pine picture rail about two feet from the ceiling.

We sat there in companionable silence for a few minutes before the buzz of the doorbell disrupted us.

'That'll be House.' James commented; getting to his feet as the buzzer rang again.

'What would happen if you didn't let him in?'

'He'd keep buzzing until he drove one of us nuts, or break the door down.'

'You think he could do that?'

'He's done it before. Come on, we'd better let him in before he breaks something.'

---

Later that afternoon I was reclining on the bed that had been delivered, House had mysteriously disappeared for the hour that it took James and I to put it together, when I heard the bedroom door creak open.

James was in the shower- the water was still running- so I assumed that it would be House. I had my eyes closed, reclining on the pillows that I had recently stuffed into the red pillowcases that House had dropped into the cart at Pottery Barn.

'Where have you been?' I asked, eyes still closed. 'You missed all the manual labour.'

'I do that a lot.' I felt the mattress moving and heard a clatter.

'Drop your cane?'

He grunted at me and I rolled my head, opening my eyes and saw him swivelling onto the bed, lifting his right leg up with his hands and reclining into the pillows on the other side of the bed.

'Why red?' I asked, and got another grunt as he closed his eyes, massaging his thigh.

'Seems to suit you.' he muttered, reaching into the pocket of his jacket and extracting his pill bottle.

I watched him as he dry-swallowed a single tablet, sighing as it went down his throat.

'How many of those are you taking?'

'Enough to stop the pain.'

I considered him for a moment before rolling onto my side, propping my head up on my palm and changing the subject.

---

We were still talking a few minutes later, when James came into the room.

'The bed looks great.' he commented, resting his hands on the foot of the bed before leaning over and scooping House's cane up, dropping it onto the bed between us.

'I like it.' I told him, rolling onto my back and putting my hands behind my head to look at my Dad.

He was in dark blue jeans and a pale grey McGill shirt, and as I spoke he rounded the end of the bed, I pulled my legs up and he sat down at my feet.

The three of us kept chatting for another hour or so, until James' beeper went off out in the kitchen.

'Got to go- one of my patients is starting to reject his bone marrow transplant.' he told us, pulling a jacket on and grabbing his car keys from the table.

I heard his car start up a few seconds later, and he peeled away from the kerb with a slight spin of the tires.

'He's pretty dedicated, isn't he?' I asked House. He was still flat on his back on the right hand side of the bed, but by this time I was sitting up against the headboard.

'He's the head of the Oncology department, he has to be dedicated.'

'But you're the head of your department, and you've barely answered your pages all weekend.'

'I don't have any active cases at the moment, all the pages have been my boss harassing me about coming in to help with the free clinic down at the hospital. I'm supposed to do ten hours a week and I'm a little behind this month.'

'How far behind?'

'I've only done fifteen hours.'

'It's the twenty fourth! You'll have to spend the rest of the week down there if you're going to make it all up by the end of the month.'

'I know. That's what the pages were about. By the way, I also got a message from Mason. You won't be able to start down in Pathology until next Tuesday- the guy who quit gave two weeks' notice, not one.'

'So what am I supposed to do for a week and a half?'

'You could do my clinic hours for me.' He suggested, a lazy grin playing on his features.

'Or I could just do what I did on Friday- help out with your differentials and keep freaking your team out. They were sure that I was there to replace one of them.'

'_And_ do some of my clinic hours.'

'Jedi mind trick won't work on me, Greg.' I informed him, shuffling down so that I was flat on my back next to him again.

He cocked his eyebrow at me again.

'Why do you call me Greg? Even Wilson calls me House.'

'I figure we're not at the hospital- this is purely a social interaction. I'll certainly call you Dr House when we're at work, but since you've spent the better part of the afternoon stretched out on my bed it's a little silly to be calling you by your professional title.'

The eyebrow fell, and he grinned again.

'You might not want to mention the 'afternoon stretched out on your bed' to anyone at the hospital- don't want them jumping to the wrong conclusions.'

'I think Thirteen has already jumped to that conclusion.'

'She's just jealous and wants me for herself.'

'No, she's not. She just doesn't want you too distracted while you're supposed to be working.'

He considered this for a moment.

'Definitely come and help the team out- but it wouldn't hurt you to do some time in the clinic, keep you on your toes.'

'Sounds like a good compromise.'

We lay there for a few more minutes in companionable silence, and I felt my eyes sliding shut. The day was catching up with me- the ride back from Yale, helping James with the room, setting up and making the bed, it had been a full-on day for a Sunday. I rolled onto my side so that my back was to Greg and curled up a little, drifting off as I heard him start to snore.

---

I woke up the next morning, surprised that I'd slept that long. The sun was coming in through the door from the open blinds in the lounge, and as I yawned I realised that Greg was spooned against my back, one arm draped over my midsection. I shuffled around a bit and his arm tightened, then he yawned and released it again.

Rolling onto my back I saw that his other arm was under the pillow, and he'd kicked his shoes off at some point. His face was a few inches from mine, and as he opened his eyes he gave me a slow smile.

'You two picked a good mattress.'

'You did help.'

'I'm good with things like that. What time is it?'

'Six fifteen.' I told him, glancing at my watch.

'Why am I awake at six fifteen?' he yawned and closed his eyes again, stretching his other hand above his head and letting his eyes close again. 'You can come into the hospital with me this morning, I usually go in around nine. Go back to sleep.'

'What time does Dad usually go in?'

'He's there by eight on the dot, but he'll close the door if we're asleep while he's getting ready.'

'I didn't hear him come home last night.'

'He might still be there. In which case, we can go back to sleep, because he'll shower and change at the hospital- he keeps some shirts in his locker.' he reached into his pocket and extracted his pill bottle, dry-swallowing another Vicodin before he set the bottle on the bedside table.

I rearranged myself so my back was to him and a few seconds later felt him slide towards me, slipping one arm around my midsection and pressing his face into the nape of my neck, sighing and relaxing back into sleep-mode.

A few minutes later, his hand moved.

That was the first inkling I got that he hadn't really gone back to sleep. I kept my breathing steady and ignored him, if he was going to act like a teenager then so could I.

The hand that was on the outside of my t-shirt was being very sneaky. He used his pinkie finger to ruck it up a little, then pretended to stretch his arm above his head for a second, and when the hand came to rest again it was about four inches lower and the entire palm was on exposed skin.

He left it there for a few seconds, gauging my reaction, before his thumb started to move in a slow circle, going higher until his hand was under my shirt.

I think he did fall asleep then, because he stopped there, his hand on my lower ribs, his nose at my neck. I relaxed and started to doze myself, until about twenty minutes later when I heard the distinct sound of a key scraping in the front door lock.

House heard it to, snapping awake and looking down at me as I rolled onto my back to see what he was going to do.

The front door was pushed open, and rather than removing himself entirely from the room, House rolled onto his back and closed his eyes again. Following his lead I went back to where I had been on my side, facing the door.

'Awake yet, Ryan?' I heard James whisper from the doorway. I cracked an eyelid at him.

'What time is it?'

'Ten to seven. I just came home to take a shower and get changed. He told you that you're not starting until next Tuesday?' he asked, nodding at the apparently sleeping form of Greg House sprawled on the bed behind me.

'He said that I could come in and help with his differentials if I wanted to.'

'Are you sure? Lisa mentioned that she can put you in as an intern but you'll only get paid minimum until you get placed as a fellow.'

'That doesn't' matter, I've got some money saved up, besides, I've taken almost four hundred off you two in the last few days. Tell you what- how about we meet for lunch?'

'Come and have breakfast with me first, I'll drive you in.'

'What about him?' I asked, sitting up in bed and jerking a thumb over my shoulder at Greg's prone form.

'He usually sleeps until about eight thirty and comes in around nine. His bike's still here, he'll be fine.'

'Okay. You go shower and I'll work on breakfast.'

He smiled and went into his own bedroom, coming back past the kitchen a moment later with his shirt, pants and tie draped over his arm.

I hunted around and found enough ingredients to make omelettes, and after I heard the shower start, I made no effort to be quiet about it. The door to my room was still open, and after a few minutes of banging pots and pans around, I heard Greg groan at me.

'You better be making a five star breakfast, Dalton.' he muttered, and a minute or so later I heard the step-thump, step-thump of him and his cane emerging from my room.

'What are you making?' he asked, pulling a chair up at the kitchen table.

'Omelettes with spinach, bacon and red peppers. Want one?'

'Duh.'

'Here.' I had poured three glasses of orange juice and set one in front of him. 'It's always better to take those things with food, you know.'

'I know, I know...' he had been on the point of dry-swallowing a pill when I'd given him the juice, and after a wry smile he actually washed the pill down with half the glass.

I mixed up the omelettes and made toast, just as I was setting Greg's down in front of him I heard the distinct sound of a hairdryer starting. I closed my eyes for a moment, wondering how to phrase the question, when Greg answered it anyway.

'He takes pride in his appearance, apparently.' he said, digging into his omelette. 'This is good. You better stop him with his attack of the hair products before I eat his as well.'

I just cuffed him on the back of the head, which got me a raised eyebrow and a look of total confusion, and went towards the bathroom.

'Excuse me, Mr Hairdryer? Sorry, Dr Hairdryer?' I asked James from the doorway. He turned it off and turned to look at me a little sheepishly.

'Come on, your breakfast is getting cold. You can finish that off in a few minutes.' He put the large black Schwarzkopf Professional piece of equipment down on the vanity and followed me back into the kitchen. Greg was leaning over and about to steal a piece of omelette from what was in fact _my_ plate, when I whipped it out from under him and dug in myself.

'Where do you keep your towels?' I asked James when I was halfway through my breakfast.

'Cupboard below the sink, next to his shaving stuff.' Greg filled in, still casting the odd glance at my omelette. After a few more seconds I shoved the plate at him, got up and went to my room to get some clothes for the day.

When I was ready fifteen minutes later, I came out into the kitchen to find Greg gone and Dad doing the breakfast dishes with his sleeves rolled up.

'Where did House go?' I asked, pulling a tea towel off the oven and starting to dry the plates.

'He wanted to shower at his place- and he said if you were going to be helping his team you should get a lab-coat of your own issued- he doesn't want you making his smell all girly.'

I grinned at him and he smiled back. We finished the dishes in companionable silence, and while I was pulling my shoes on (not my steel-capped boots this time, but my black Crocs I'd worn as an intern) he went and brushed his teeth.

I found my purse and checked its' contents- wallet, cell phone, iPod, notebook, camera, Tic-tacs, insulin. Everything was there, so I checked the coffee table and found James' car keys.

When he emerged from the bathroom I swung the keys around my pinkie finger.

'Can I drive?'

He looked a little apprehensive, but swallowed once and nodded. He picked up his briefcase and patted himself down, checking his wallet was in his pocket, cell phone in the other and his pager in its' holder on his hip.

'You'll have to go see Cuddy today, get a parking permit, officially sign-on as a member of staff. I'll give her a call when we get in and make you an appointment.' James told me as I started the Volvo.

'House said I could maybe work in the clinic while I'm waiting for the spot in Pathology to open up.'

'Did he just? He probably wants you to help out with his hours. He's behind this month.'

'I was actually thinking I could just get back into the swing of things- I've been doing pathology lab work for the last two months, I want to get back into the real stuff, diagnosing people, not blood samples.'

'The clinic will certainly give you that- it's the only walk-in for fifty miles. Turn left here.'

---

We kept talking about the clinic and what it entailed all the way to the hospital, and just as we were walking in the front doors I heard the distinct sound of a motorbike pulling up behind us. I turned and watched as Greg parked the bike diagonally across the handicapped parking space he'd been assigned, taking up as much space as possible. He unclipped his cane from the side of the bike and limped over to where James and I had paused just outside the main doors.

'Excellent breakfast, Dalton.' he announced to all the people milling around the entrance. 'We'll have to do it again sometime.'

'Certainly, Dr House.' I took the praise for what it was, ignoring my father's look of mortification as more than a few nurses took note of the conversation.

'Come on, House, I've got an appointment, can you take Ryan to Cuddy's office?' he asked as quietly as he could.

'It's fine, I already know where her office is. I'll be up in a few minutes, Dr House.'

He looked at me with a funny expression, like he didn't know what to say. I just ignored him and strode through the doors.


	2. Chapters 5 through 10

---

'So House told you about the position in pathology?' Lisa asked, handing me a manila folder.

'It was a bit of a surprise.' I opened the file and flicked through the contents- previous job details, ID check, criminal records consent, employment application, pretty standard stuff.

'He practically blackmailed Mason to get it- it was only after I showed him your resume that he admitted that House might be right. Dr Mason wants to meet you this afternoon.'

'What time?'

'The appointment's at three, in his office- it's on the second floor- same position as House's, but one floor down.'

'Too easy.'

'And I'll need all of that back this afternoon. I've made arrangements for you to help out in the clinic as one of the on-call interns for the rest of this week, since the pathology space won't be free until next Tuesday, but until you're on the system you're not officially supposed to treat anyone.'

I took that to mean she had heard about the EPI the week before, but was willing to let it slide because it had saved the guys' life.

'Well, I can fill most of this out right now, and if you need someone down in the clinic I can be in an exam room as soon as I'm on the computers.'

'Sounds good. Stay here, I've got a board meeting in ten minutes, I'll come back and file all of that when it's over.'

'Great.'

When Lisa came back and had put all my information into the computer, she printed my time-sheet for the clinic and told me that I could go down to the supply store before I started in the clinic to get myself a lab-coat.

'We'll have an ID tag printed by the end of the week but you'll be fine without one for your first few days. Let your patients get their own meds at the pharmacy and don't take any crap from the nurses. Good luck.' She stood up and shook my hand.

'Thank-you, Dr Cuddy. I really appreciate this, and everything else you've done for me.'

'Welcome aboard, Dr Dalton. If you're even half as good as your father you'll be an asset to the hospital.'

---

My first patient was not, in fact, a patient.

'What are you doing in here?' I asked the lanky juvenile who had hooked his cane onto the light fitting while he played his PSP in Exam Room Two. The file I'd been given by the nurse said 'Luke N. Laura', which from his love of soaps I gathered was a lame attempt at a joke.

'Waiting for you. What did Cuddy say?'

'That you blackmailed Dr Mason into giving me the spot and he only relented after he saw my resume.'

'Did she tell him who your dad is?'

'We didn't discuss that, it didn't seem relevant. He's my emergency contact in the personnel file, but other than that the fact that James Wilson is my father shouldn't matter much as long as I do my job right while I'm here.'

'Hm.' He had a lollipop sticking out of the pocket of his jacket, and when he squinted at the screen of his portable game, I reached over and swiped it, unwrapping the treat and putting it in my mouth before he could object.

'That was supposed to be mine.' he said, pausing the game.

'So get another one- there's a whole jar of them on the nurse's station.' I said around the piece of candy. 'How long is an average clinic exam supposed to take?'

'About fifteen minutes, give or take.' He stuck the game in one of his jacket pockets and pulled his Vicodin out of the other. I swiped that, too, before he could pop the lid.

'Hey! Those are _mine_.'

'Exactly. You had one less than two hours ago.'

'My leg hurts.'

'I'm guessing that it hurts a lot. You're sitting down. Give it some massage. Have you tried heat therapy?'

'No, but I _know_that Vicodin works. Those might not.'

'Only one way to find out.' I turned to the conveniently labelled cupboards and found what I was after, a liquid crystal heat pack, activated by cracking the crystals the same way a glow stick works. I crushed it between my palms and let it start to warm up, stepped forward and laid it on his leg, slid my thumbs under it and felt for the edges of the scar Lisa had told me about. I ran my thumbs gently up and down either side of it, leaving the heat pack on the top.

He closed his eyes and leaned his head back- it was definitely working.

'You should get a wheat bag- you can prop your leg up at home and do this yourself.'

'But it feels so much better when someone else does it.' he said lazily, rolling his head to look at me. I finished the massage and pressed the heat pack against his leg so the warmth could penetrate his jeans.

'Feel better?' I asked, going over to the sink to wash the denim fibres off my fingers.

'Definitely.' he told me, pressing the pack to his leg with his right hand. 'You want to be careful, doing things like that- if I walk out of here with a smile on my face the nurses' heads will explode.'

'Like you'd care.' I told him, wiping my hands on a paper towel and tossing it into the trash.

'I don't, but your dad might be a bit upset when they find out that you're his daughter, and everyone thinks we're sleeping together.'

'Last night hardly counts.' I pointed out. 'Anyway, you were a perfect gentleman.'

'That's not what they'll think.' he said, nodding towards the door that led to the rest of the clinic.

'So what do you want me to do? Storm out of here in tears, or elbow you in the leg so that you limp out of here bawling?'

'I'd prefer the painless option.'

'Look, Greg,' again, the raised eyebrow at the use of his first name. 'We know what's happening. You certainly don't seem to be the kind of guy who cares about hospital gossip. I can leave here with a grin or in tears but the mere fact that we've been in here for fifteen minutes without making any serious noise will raise some eyebrows.'

He held out a hand and I rolled my eyes, tossing the pill bottle back to him. He didn't take one, just slipped it into his pocket. He left his hand there, rolling the bottle around, like a kid with a security blanket.

I made some notes in the Luke N. Laura chart and added it to the pile to be returned to the records room, grabbed the next one and called the patient to exam room one.

---

I was having lunch with James when I raised the subject of Dr House with him.

'House ambushed me in the clinic this morning.' I said conversationally over a mouthful of salad.

'Really? Usually he hides out there, it might not have been planned.'

'The chart for the room he was in said Luke N. Laura on it- looked like a brain cancer patient.'

'Oh, that. He faked cancer about a year ago to get into some drug trial.'

'He faked cancer?'

'I know, I was pretty annoyed at the time, but he's done stuff like that before.'

'Like faking brain cancer? What else has he done?'

'Well, that was one of his stupider moments, but it turned out the drug trial was about reducing depression rates in cancer patients. Cameron told me he referred to it as 'putting a really cool drug into the pleasure centre of my brain'.'

'I knew he was crazy but that's just insane.' I had stopped eating, intrigued.

'I think he was depressed, just didn't want to admit it. Why did he ambush you?'

'I don't really know- he was about to pop a Vicodin when I stopped him and put a heat pad onto his leg instead. Apparently it helped.'

'Did you give him his pills back?'

'I might be young, but I'm not stupid. I did tell him that I was having lunch with you, though.'

As if on cue a hand reached over my shoulder, taking a quarter of James' sandwich, and Dr House dropped into the seat next to mine. He pulled his pill bottle out of his pocket and dry-swallowed one, eyeing the chicken slices next to my salad as he took a bite out of the egg-and-mayo he had thieved.

'Here.' I speared a slice of chicken for myself and pushed the plate towards him, dropping the fork onto the table as I stood up. 'Who wants a coffee?'

'Espresso.' House muttered, taking up my fork and attacking the remains of my Caesar salad.

'Just a latte. Here.' James reached into his pocket but I waved a hand at him to refuse the money, walking over to the barista and ordering our coffees as he relented and put the bills back into his pocket.

By the time I got back to the table with the coffees James' pager was going berserk, so he grabbed his paper cup and bolted, giving me a smile and House a look that seemed to be a warning as he departed.

'Come upstairs, I've got a job for you.' House told me as he got to his feet, shuffling the tray towards the end of the table and leaving it there.

'What kind of job?' I asked, handing him the espresso and walking with him towards the elevators.

'Well, Cameron used to do it, and Cuddy's been on my back all week.'

'What am I doing?' I asked, pushing the 'up' button.

'Thirteen needs a hand- she's doing my case notes, I need someone to answer my mail.'

'You're kidding.' I deadpanned, knowing that he was serious.

'If course not! Taub and Kutner are in the clinic because we haven't got any cases, Thirteen offered to do the case notes, and I want to watch General Hospital this afternoon.'

I just sighed and took a sip from my espresso as he used his cane to jab the 'three' button inside the elevator. Suddenly it looked as if I wouldn't be making it back down to the clinic that afternoon.

---

It eventuated that Thirteen had finished the case notes- there was a large stack of blue patient files on House's desk with a post-it on top- 'sign next to the flags and take to Cuddy.' There were green flags sticking out of the files, and he gave a dramatic sigh.

'All this paperwork. What a waste of time.' He flopped down in his chair and went to pop another Vicodin.

'Less than thirty minutes apart is not a healthy dosage, Greg.'

'Greg now, is it?'

'When I'm advising you as a doctor I will use your first name. Don't make me page my Dad.'

'Fine.' he muttered, pocketing the pill bottle again and instead taking another swig from his coffee cup.

He then reached behind him and pulled a rather large bundle of business sized envelopes out from behind his computer monitor. They were held together with half a dozen rubber bands and seemed to be grouped chronologically.

'Here. You can open these while I spend an hour signing my name.'

We sat in companionable silence for the next forty minutes, punctuated by the odd bored sigh from House as he closed the folders and stuck the green flags around the edge of his monitor.

I used the somewhat blunt scalpel that had been in his pen-jar to open the envelopes, sorting them into junk, consult requests and various complaints. Some of the consult requests were more than a month old, so after I'd disposed of the junk and pharmaceutical spiels I began sorting through them, finding a few repeat requests.

'What do you want to do about these?' I asked, showing him the piles. There was one name that had five requests in writing sent over the last month- it seemed to be directly from the patient himself, most of the others were from doctors at other hospitals.

'What are they?'

'This is a request from Mercy General from Dr Frazer.' I handed him the letter and he glanced at it, picked up the phone and dialled the number on the letterhead.

'Frazer? It's House. Just got your letter- yeah, it took me a week to replace my last secretary. It's not Wilson's, it's a parasite. Check her stomach- from the symptoms it sounds like a tapeworm.'

He hung up the phone without further conversation, balled up the letter and tossed it into his trash can.

'Is there anything else in there that would be simple enough for first-year med student to diagnose?'

We spent the next half hour sorting through the consult requests, House occasionally picking up the phone to deliver his sarcastic diagnosis directly to the letter writer; more often than not he just screwed them up and tossed them at the soon overflowing can in the corner.

'These are appointment requests.'

'Anything interesting?'

'It looks like you've treated at least a few of them since the requests- there's some thank-you letters in here as well. But these three haven't had any response, and this one sounds like he's getting desperate.'

He skimmed the letters and picked up the phone again.

'Mr Morse? It's Dr House. Yeah, I know, I've got them all here in front of me, I had to fire my secretary and the new one was hopeless and only just got these all to me. I've got an opening tomorrow morning. Princeton Plainsboro- ask for Dr Dalton to be paged when you get to the main desk, she'll get you admitted and we'll be able to investigate what's going on then.' I could hear the voice starting to thank him, but House just put the phone down.

'Go get a pager from the supply room and let the front desk know what number it is so you can actually meet and greet this guy tomorrow.'

'What about the rest?'

'That one's MS, this one has a fungal infection in his stomach, and the other two are just bad reactions to their birth control pills. Do a mail-out and tell the MS patient to go to St Jerome's, they've got some trials going that she'd qualify for. Let the fungal guy know that he needs to stop eating mushrooms that grow near his roses and get a shot of penicillin, and the other two just need to change their prescriptions.'

'Okay.' I made some notes on the letters that were still on the desk, and House reached over to flick his TV on. I moved around the desk and shoved him aside, using his computer to type up the letters while his soap started.

Once General Hospital was over, House's beeper started to go crazy.

'It's Cuddy- apparently I'm late for clinic. Come on, I've got a few more hours to do this afternoon.' He used his cane to turn the TV off and started to stand up.

'No can do Dr House- I've got a meeting with Dr Mason in Pathology- the one you set up if I remember correctly.'

'Damn, that's right. Oh, well. I'll be in the clinic if you need something to do after your interview.'

We walked towards the elevator together and I grinned at him as I took the stairs to the floor below, earning a lopsided smile from the unshaven physician as he jabbed the 'down' button with the end of his cane. I took the stairs two at a time and strode up the hall to the office directly below Dr House's, with 'Dr Perry Mason- Department of Pathology' embossed on the door.

---

At ten past five that evening I was waiting for James to finish, having spent the afternoon touring the pathology lab with Dr Mason, discussing my internship at Yale and what my fellowship at Princeton Plainsboro would entail. I was reading a magazine in the clinic waiting room, when the step-thump of House and his cane made me look up.

'She made me see fifteen patients in two hours.' he moaned, flopping down next to me, throwing an arm over his eyes as part of the overdramatic gesture.

'Oh, woe is you, I'm sure they were all fascinating subjects of medical intrigue.' I told him, tossing a copy of Cosmo in his general direction.

'Woe is me, indeed. She was hovering like some kind of surveillance device, every time I thought I could sneak off she'd hand me a patient file and make me go back into an exam room. She knows I hate sick people!'

'Would it be redundant for me to point out that, as a doctor, sick people are a big part of your job?'

'Extremely.' He began to flick through the magazine I'd thrown at him, apparently he was waiting for James as well.

'Ready to go?' James came out of the stairwell about ten minutes later.

'Apart from the big baby complaining about having to do his job, we're fine.'

House grunted at me and got up from the chair he had been sulking in.

'You know I'm coming to your place for dinner, right?' he asked, picking his helmet up from the seat next to him and shooting James a covert grin.

'Good thing I got three steaks out this morning.' James sighed and held the front door open for us. House went to swing a leg over his bike, but stopped, sighed and handed me his helmet.

'Here, you ride this. I've been on my feet all afternoon and my leg hurts. I'll catch a lift with your dad.'

I took the helmet, unsure, but House tossed the keys at me before he turned and followed James towards the Volvo.

'Just meet us at home.' James told me, hitting the remote unlock and waiting for House to settle before getting into the car himself.

I put the helmet on, grateful that it fit okay, and turned the key in the ignition, slowly puttering out of the car-park and overtaking the Volvo.

---

I parked the bike as close to the front door as I could get it, fished the spare key out of the window-box and went inside, flicking the air-conditioner on to pull the temperature back to bearable, leaving the front door open a crack and dropping my purse into my bedroom. Digging through the fridge I pulled out some salad ingredients, chopping tomatoes and shredding the lettuce, tossing some cubes of cheese and slices of cucumber through it. I put the bowl back in the fridge and pulled out a beer for myself, and two more as I heard the front door opening.

The salad-and-steak combination, along with a divine red wine jus that James assured me was not a Rachael Ray recipe, turned out to be a rather lovely dinner, eaten on the couch and all.

I took a shower while the two men argued over the TiVo, came back out and promptly ended the argument by changing the channel to an Oprah special that I'd seen advertised while House had been watching General Hospital. James sighed, resigned, and sat back on his cushion to watch with me, while House spent three minutes trying to get the remote off me- until I dropped it down my shirt.

'I _am_ a doctor, you know. I could just reach on in there and get it.'

'This guy _is_ my dad, you know. He would kick your ass.'

I turned to look at James, who grinned at me and leaned forward to catch House's eye, giving him a stern look that said 'be nice.'

'Anyway, it's James' TV. He can pick.' I fished the remote out of my top and handed it to the man in question, who just rested it on the arm of the sofa, leaving Oprah's Primetime Special on the screen.

Greg huffed, and pouted, but eventually settled down in his seat, leaning back and after a few minutes he stretched his arm along the back of the sofa behind me, his fingers resting lightly on my shoulder.

When James stretched and muttered something about going to bed at around half past nine, Greg just grunted at him while I stood up to give him a hug and a kiss on the cheek goodnight, followed him up the hall and went into the bathroom to brush my teeth next to my Dad.

By the time I got back into the den, Greg had decided to occupy the entire couch.

I cleared my throat from my spot in the doorway. 'Don't I get any sofa?' I asked, hands on hips.

'Uh, no, clearly not.' He shifted slightly, stretching his legs out further in front of him, rubbing his right thigh yet again.

I sighed and came over to the sofa, lifting his feet and taking a seat on the opposite end to him, letting his ankles rest on my knees. He winced a little when I was bending his knees, but closed his eyes and relaxed as VH1 started playing a Johnny Cash song.

'So, where are you sleeping tonight?' I asked a few minutes later.

'Not on the sofa.' He told me, at which I raised an eyebrow at him.

'If you want to sleep over, you have to _ask_.'

He looked at me for a few seconds, and when I didn't say anything, relented.

'Would you mind if I took up half of your bed again tonight?'

'No problem.' I grinned at him and he rolled his eyes, turning back to the TV.

It wasn't long after that when I started to feel my eyes sliding closed, so got up, found my pyjamas and crawled in between the red sheets on my new bed.

I think it was about an hour later that I heard Greg come into the bedroom, having turned off the TV and been up to the bathroom and back. He thumped onto the bed behind me and as he shuffled around I pretended to still be asleep. After about a minute of restless wriggling I stretched, yawned and rolled onto my back to face him.

'Just what are you doing?' I asked, cracking an eye open to glare at him.

'Trying to take these off.' He had his thumbs in his belt keepers, but had sat down on the bed before he'd pulled them any lower than his butt.

'So stand up and let them fall to the floor.' I muttered, amazed that this 'genius' doctor hadn't thought of that already.

'Hurts too much.' he grumbled, then unhooked his thumbs and gave up, lifting his left leg up onto the bed and gripping his right with both hands so that as his hips swivelled he could pull it up as well.

'Here.' I got out from under the comforter and moved down the bed, grabbing his jeans just above the knees and giving them a pull.

'Hang onto your boxers.' I told him as I tugged his pants off. He quickly obeyed, grabbing the front waistband of his black cotton boxer briefs as I relieved him of his dark denim jeans, folding them twice and dropping them onto the floor at the foot of the bed.

'Need anything else done, your highness?' I asked as he rearranged himself so he was underneath the quilt.

'No... thanks, Ryan.'

I smiled at him and crawled back up to my own pillows, slid my legs in between the sheets and rolled onto my side so my back was to him.

'Anytime, Greg.'

He followed my lead, moving over so he was directly behind me, not quite touching but close enough that I could feel the warmth radiating from his body. He had a t-shirt and boxers on, I was in a singlet and sleep pants, and after a few seconds, I felt him reach out and slide an arm around my stomach. I moved my own hand higher to accommodate his, and when he settled I reached down and caught his wrist between my fingers, gave his hand a squeeze then shut my eyes and tried to get to sleep.

---

The next morning, I ended up dinking Greg into the hospital on the back of my own bike- he was apparently experiencing a bit more pain than usual, having been on his feet for an extended period the day before- and as I turned the engine off I spotted Kutner.

He was getting out of his Honda coupe, and as House managed to get himself upright on the pavement, I nodded in Kutner's general direction, alerting Greg to the fact that one of his employees was witnessing what was surely an easily misinterpreted situation.

'Come on, Dalton, we haven't got all day.' he told me, a sly grin plastered across his features.

'House...' I said, warning him. The last thing I wanted was for him to do something stupid, and give the fellows a reason to hate me. It was bad enough that Kutner had seen him get off the back of my bike- but what Greg did in the next ten seconds made sure that my name would be doing the gossip rounds by the end of the morning at the latest.

I had virtually no warning. For a cripple he can move damn fast- he had rounded the bike and just as I took my own helmet off, he slid a hand up my neck to the back of my head and planted a nerve-melting kiss right on my lips. I froze, not sure what I was supposed to do, my mind racing.

_What if James saw us?_

_What if James heard about it?_

_Why hadn't I just recoiled and slapped him?_

_Why was I kissing him_back_?_

_What was it about him that made me not want to say no to him?_

_Not_able_to say no to him?_

There wasn't too much I could do, really, because by the time I un-froze, Greg had stepped back, that same sly grin playing at the edges of his mouth. I looked at him, mouth half-open, and he winked at me, once, licked his lips suggestively before he turned and started limping towards the entrance.

I stood there, still gaping, for what felt like an eternity, but must have only been a few seconds. I heard footsteps approaching and snapped myself out of the fog, putting my helmet down on my bike seat and digging in my purse for the key to the seat compartment.

'Did he even thank you for the ride?' James was beside me, briefcase in hand as I fumbled with my keychain, remembering at last that the seat key was on the chain that was still hanging out of the ignition.

'Yeah.' I eventually managed to stammer, stowing my helmet and avoiding his eyes. 'He actually did.' I laughed a little, more to shake myself out of the funk I was stuck in than anything, and James laughed softly with me.

'I think he's taken a shine to you- he never even thanks me when I take him places.'

I just nodded, trying to process exactly what had happened in the last minute or so.

'Well, we should get inside. I've got an appointment in twenty minutes, and I'm sure the clinic will have half a dozen patients waiting for you.' he said, moving towards the entrance.

'Sure. Right behind you.'

I did actually follow him, but moved at a much slower pace, waiting for him to be in the elevator before I bypassed the clinic entirely and went to the women's' locker room, taking a seat on one of the benches and trying to straighten my head out.

It could have been nothing at all- just a stunt to make people stare and get some attention- but I pushed that aside. There was definitely something going on. I'd woken up that morning to find him spooned up against me, the arm around my torso gripping me tight, his face pressed into the juncture of my neck and shoulder, and when I'd gone to move he had just pulled me tighter against him and sighed, mumbling in his sleep.

'Not letting _you_ go.'

The emphasis on the 'you' had made me smile- and I'd relaxed against him, letting his steady breathing lull me back to dreamland.

When I'd woken up the second time, he was on his back, now with both arms around me- I had rolled over and had my head on his chest, he had his left arm wrapped around my shoulders, right around my lower abdomen. He was awake, too, and when I looked up at him his smile had what I thought was a cynical edge to it, so I'd scrambled out of bed, practically running down the hallway into the bathroom, even beating James to the shower.

I rethought the smile as I sat in the locker room- nurses, doctors and orderlies milling around me, making preparations to start their day shifts- beginning to realise that it may not have been laced with cynicism as I had originally thought. His eyes had been sparkling, and he may well have been smiling _suggestively_, not in a 'well, look what a position you've gotten yourself into' kind of way.

I tossed my shoulder bag into the locker I'd been assigned the previous day, pulling out the white coat and shrugging into it before hanging my stethoscope around my neck.

The clinic was a zoo- even at this hour. I grabbed the first file for the patient waiting in room three, and started my day.

---

By the time I got James' page to join him for lunch, I was teetering on exhaustion.

I hadn't taken a break and it was almost two- according to my chart on the wall in the nurses' station, I had seen well over fifty patients in just over six hours. When James paged me I was almost praying for an emergency, anything to get me out of the place, even just for a few minutes.

When I was done with my current patient, I tossed his file into the 'to be alphabetized' pile and wrote LUNCH UNTIL 15:10 next to my name on the whiteboard at the clinic entrance. One of the nurses started to object, but I think the look I gave her might have made her rethink not just the comment but her entire career path.

Dr Wilson's page had said to meet him in his office, not the cafeteria, which I thought was a little unusual, but did anyway. He might have caught a glimpse of me when he was walking by the clinic at some stage and decided that a quiet lunch would do me good.

'Hi, James.' I said, taking a seat on his couch as he looked up from some paperwork he was completing.

'I see you've been in the clinic all morning. Set some kind of record, seeing fifty eight patients in six hours.'

'Record, hey? I'll have to give Guinness a call.' I slid down a little on the couch, leaning over and resting my head on the armrest, pulling my feet up onto the cushion.

'Hungry?'

'Not really. More tired. Might take a nap before I go back.' I yawned through the sentence, suddenly realising just how much the morning had taken out of me.

'Are you having sex with House?'

That snapped me awake. I sat up straight and responded automatically.

'What? No! I met him all of four hours before I met you!'

He considered my answer for a moment before continuing.

'Because rumour has it that the two of you were making out in the parking lot this morning.'

I gaped at him. I knew that what had happened was going to make the rounds, but I assumed that James would be smart enough to know that rumours were rarely true. I struggled for words, and eventually decided on the truth.

'We didn't make out. He thanked me for the ride and kissed me. Once. I didn't even think anyone would care enough to notice.'

He looked at me, and I could practically see the cogs turning in his brain.

'Ask House if you don't believe me.' I told him, hoping fervently that Greg would back up my version of events.

'Ask House what?'

I spun around, alarmed. The voice had come from behind what I thought was a glass window but turned out to be a door- James' office had a balcony, and apparently House could access that balcony without going through said office. I ground my teeth slightly as James got up to open the door and House limped in, not taking a seat but looking directly at me.

'Ask House what? Go on, I haven't got all day.'

'Well, James, you were the one with all the questions.' I was deflecting and I could tell that House knew, he narrowed his eyes at me before turning his attention to my father.

'The rumour mill is going wild with stories that you two are... well...' he paused, not sure how to phrase the end of the sentence.

'Fucking like rabbits?' House put in, making James turn scarlet and me bite my lip so as not to burst out laughing.

'You could put it that way, yes.' James finished, still looking flustered.

'Well, Jimmy, considering that we've been sleeping in the bedroom next to yours, wouldn't _you_have been the first to know about it if we were?'

That stumped him for a moment, before he realised that he had more ammunition.

'What about you having a passionate little session in the parking lot this morning?'

'I thanked her for giving me a ride- it was a quick kiss, four, five seconds, tops. People will talk.' House seemed to be happy now that he knew what was going on, motioned with his cane for me to shove over, and took a seat on the end of the sofa.

'You can't do that!'

'Why not? As far as anyone here is concerned, Dalton's a new pathology fellow whom I've taken a liking to, and other than you, me and Cuddy, nobody knows she's your kid.'

James had gotten out of his seat, outraged, before Greg had silenced him again with that statement. As he thought about the implications of what Greg had said, he sat down on the front of his desk.

'See, Jimmy, it's not as apocalyptic as you'd hoped for. All anyone will think is that she's my new girlfriend.'

I didn't bother to point out the gaping holes in that explanation- the fact that I was sleeping in James's guestroom being the first on a very long list.

'Can we go and get some lunch, now?' I asked, realising that my stomach was growling.

'I've already eaten-'

'Let's go somewhere private, stir things up a bit more.' House suggested, cutting James off. 'Wilson, car keys.' he snapped the fingers of his free hand in James' direction, and after a moments' hesitation, the keys for the Volvo were handed over.

'Can't have my girlfriend driving me everywhere- got to at least pretend to be a gentleman. Come on, my treat, I know a little place that does wicked pizza.'

I sighed and stood up, giving James a 'what can I do?' look before following Greg towards the elevators.

---

It was only after we got _back_ from lunch that I started to notice the stares and whispering. Some of the nurses gave me looks that would have stripped paint, but I ignored it and decided to be professional.

Greg, of course, couldn't help himself. As soon as he knew that people were watching, he had to put on a show. He walked along on my right hand side and when I moved towards the clinic he followed me, put a hand on my ass and steered me into an empty exam room right in front of the entire clinic staff- and Lisa Cuddy.

I saw Cuddy's eyes widen as House pushed me through the door, but he closed it behind us before I could say or do anything, flicking the lock to red. The room he had chosen was the only one without a window in the door, of course.

'What the hell are you doing?' I asked him as he checked the door was definitely locked.

'Making sure that everyone thinks I'm in here having a little afternoon delight.'

I raised an eyebrow at him. 'Are you seriously going to start coming down here just to keep the rumours going?'

'Why else?'

'Oh, I don't know, maybe doing your job?'

'You know that I hate doing my job.'

'House...' I said, warning him.

'Come on Ryan, don't ruin my fun!'

'House, I need to at least _appear_ to be a professional while I'm inside the building. Keep it in your pants.'

Raising an eyebrow, he stepped towards me. Instinctively I took three quick paces back and he kept advancing- before I could stop him he had me pinned against the wall opposite the door.

'Your pupils are dilated, and your heart rate has doubled in the last thirty seconds, you're breathing much faster and I'm willing to bet that if I pushed the sleeves back on that shirt of yours you'd have goose bumps. If I didn't think there was a distinct possibility that you were scared, I'd believe you were turned on.'

I closed my eyes, silently begging him to just drop the subject and leave, but as soon as I showed that vulnerability, House moved in for the kill.

'You're not scared, are you?' his voice was close, too close. I could feel his breath on my neck, and a hand on my ribs. I heard the now-familiar sound of his cane clattering to the floor, and the other hand slid up my thigh, over my hip and two fingers slid into the waistband of my pants.

My eyes flew open as I felt him nuzzling into my neck, and as I leaned back to look down at him he again demonstrated that amazing ability to move extremely quickly and caught my mouth with his, a deep kiss that caught me unawares.

It took me a few seconds to react, but eventually I woke up to the fact that this was a _bad_ position to be in and pulled out of the kiss, twisting my head and reaching up to pull his hands off me.

'House, no. Stop.'

'You don't want me to stop.' He pressed his lips to the junction of my jaw and throat, moving his arms so he caught my hands in his, threading his fingers between mine and pulling them back down so my hands were resting on his hips.

My mind was racing, and after a brief internal struggle, I decided that half a minute of total weakness couldn't hurt- if anything it would make the rest of the afternoon easier to get through.

I turned my head and allowed the moment to take over, feeling his mouth pressed against mine, the roughness of his stubble tantalizing as the kiss became more desperate, he seemed to know that this wasn't going to last very long.

Eventually I had to stop him, not least because if I didn't I'd have a serious case of friction burn on my chin.

'Greg, go do your job.' I told him as he started to kiss my neck again.

'You don't want me to leave.'

'But you _need_to do your job, I need to do mine and _this_ is not appropriate. Do you have any idea what my Dad...' I drifted off, then let go of his hands and sidestepped as fast as I could, getting as far away from Greg as the small room would allow.

'Oh my god, Dad...'

Greg looked over at me, one hand bracing him against the wall, smiling with that cynical look again, the one that might have been seductive if the idea of my fathers' reaction wasn't racing through my mind.

I pressed a palm to my forehead, feeling my breathing get shallower and speeding up- I was beginning to hyperventilate. What the hell was I _doing?_ It was bad enough to have let my guard down enough for him to catch me that morning in the parking lot, but to actually make out with him, and _enjoy_the moment, in a locked exam room?

I sat down on the exam bench and pressed two fingers to my own jugular vein, timing my heart rate and desperately trying to even out my breathing.

I was pulled back to reality with a nasty jolt when I realised that the door to the exam room had just closed with a loud 'click'. Looking up I saw that the room was now empty- House had decided that my panic attack was too much for him to handle, and left.

I dropped my head into my hands and concentrated, counting out five seconds between breaths, slowing my breathing and heart rate down, but my head was still spinning.

---

Hearing the door creak open I tilted my head to see who it was, almost falling off the bench when I realised it was House, returning. He had two cans of soda, one balanced precariously on top of the other in his non-cane hand, god only knew how he'd opened the door. He hobbled over to me and set the cans down on the bench at my side, cracking one open and handing it to me.

'I'm betting your blood sugar's gone through the floor in the last two minutes, drink this or you'll pass out.'

For someone who was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when she was eleven, not to mention six years of medical school under her belt, I sure managed to cock up my blood sugar more often than most people. I took the soda and downed half of it in one gulp, and a few seconds later my head seemed to have stopped spinning so fast.

'Lie down, it'll help.' House was suddenly professional, one hand on my shoulder, making me lean over until I was on my side on the bench, my head on the paper-covered pillow as he lifted my feet up.

'How did you know...?' I asked, looking up at him.

'You started to hyperventilate and went white as a sheet. I thought I'd head off a hypoglycaemic episode. Finish that.'

I tilted my head and sipped the soda, rolling onto my back, still looking at him.

'Thank-you.'

He looked away as I said that, opening his own can and taking a moment to noisily slurp a few mouthfuls. When he looked back at me he even had the decency to blush a little.

'House, we can't do this, you know.'

'Do what? Have sodas in an exam room?'

'No, we can't be making out in an exam room. For a start it's unprofessional, and for a second, my father-'

'Has barely known you a week. It's not like he'll get all protective and parental.'

'You're his best friend. My dad's best friend. I can't be doing this with you. It's wrong on about seven different levels.'

'Eight, actually.' he said, flippant as ever as he took another sip from his can.

'Greg, come on. You know this can't happen, that's the only reason you're pushing it.'

'Oh, so I can't find you attractive at all. I'm not supposed to notice that you're the only person in this place who refuses to take my crap.'

'James doesn't-'

'Jimmy takes it, he just doesn't make it as obvious as everyone else.'

'You've known me three days.'

'Almost four.'

'I'm half your age.'

'I've got the stamina of a teenager.'

'My dad will flip.'

'He's a dad, they're supposed to flip.'

'Cuddy will go nuts.'

'That's just a bonus.'

I sat up, feeling better now that I'd calmed down and gotten some sugar into my system. I looked him square in the eye and put my foot down.

'This is not going to happen. Not now, not without my Dad knowing what's going on.'

'Who says he has to know.'

'I do! I want to try and get to know my Dad while at the same time having to keep a relationship secret from him- let alone a relationship with the man he spends most of his time with!'

House looked up at me and I saw a glint of something like mischief in his expression.

'Can we compromise?' he asked, shifting his weight.

'What kind of compromise?'

'A week.'

'A week what?'

'I give you a week of having Wilson to yourself, so you can get to know him.'

'Then what happens?'

'After a week, whatever happens, happens.'

I held his gaze for a few long seconds before giving him a curt nod.

'A week.'

---

The rest of the day passed quickly, I think I saw almost as many patients in the afternoon as I had in the morning, and met James at his car that afternoon, right on five past five.

'I'm giving House a ride home, you know where the spare key is, right?'

'Sure do. What are you in the mood for? I could make us cannelloni if you want.'

'Doesn't bother me, I'll be home soon.'

'Take your time, if I do cannelloni it'll take until at least seven before it's ready. Just page me if you're going to be much later than that.'

'Here.' He pulled out his prescription pad (which he seemed to carry like a security blanket) and scribbled something down.

'This is House's home number- he never answers it but when the answering machine kicks in just call out that dinner's ready, and I'll come home.'

'You're going to let him fend for himself?' I was a little concerned, from what I'd seen so far, House seemed pretty dependant on my Dad, not only for companionship, but for nourishment and good hygiene as well.

'He knows how to order take out. See you when I get home.' He gave me a quick hug, dropping the script page with House's number on it into my jacket pocket before going over to the Volvo- House was leaning against it and deliberately avoided my gaze when I waved goodnight to him. I sighed internally and decided that it was probably for the best- we'd agreed on a week, and I intended on taking full advantage of it.

---

We sat in companionable silence, having spinach and ricotta cannelloni with a tomato sauce while we watched an ER re-run. James had arrived home at around six thirty, complaining that House was being even more irritating than usual, moaning about his team and attempting at least three times to spike James' coffee with scotch, so that he wouldn't be able to drive home.

'He actually said that?'

'He said that either he was coming with me, or I was staying there. I think I only managed to put him off when I pointed out that you and I have only spent a few hours together _without_ him that he realised that this was important to me, and let me go. He still made me do the dishes.'

'He made you do the dishes? Dad, you're a doormat.'

'He helped!'

'How? Supervision?''

'No, I washed, he dried and put them away. I think he's starting to realise that I'm not a total pushover.'

'And why might that be?'

'Because I've got something more important than him in my life right now. Even when I was married, somehow House managed to drag me away.'

'So, I'm more important than the women you chose to marry? How does that work? You knew them, fell in love with them, made the decision that they were the people you wanted to spend the rest of your life with. How am I any different?'

'I think, in the back of my mind, I always knew that with them, there was a way out. With you, there's no backing down. You are my daughter, I can't change that. I can't divorce you, and I don't want you to end up hating me like they do.'

'You think that all of your ex-wives hate you?'

'How else would they feel? I mean, I cheated on all of them, I was never around when they really needed me. I don't want to be a bad father, I've been an absent dad for this long, I guess I want to make up for lost time.'

I considered that, chewing on a bit of pasta as he moved a few stray bits of spinach around in the dregs of tomato sauce lining his bowl.

'You know, you really shouldn't feel any sort of obligation to me.'

'But I do.'

'Yeah, I know. But I didn't look you up so that you could swoop in and be my protector, I looked you up so that I could get to know the man whose baby my mother chose to keep. I could quite easily have been an early-eighties abortion story, but she decided that a baby you made was worth hanging onto. I want to know why, and I figured getting to know you would tell me why she loved you so much.'

'She loved me?'

'Mom used to talk about you all the time. How caring and gentle you were, how much she used to love lying in bed with you, talking all night.'

His eyebrows knitted together at that, and I knew what the next question would be.

'Why didn't she ever tell me about you?'

'I honestly don't know. I never got the chance to ask. That question was on the list I had, literally, a list of ten questions, that I was going to ask her while I was home the Thanksgiving she died.'

'That must have been a nightmare.'

'I still feel bad about how I reacted at first. When she hadn't arrived to pick me up an hour after my plane landed, I called her cell phone and left a really rude message- I called her a bad mother. I found out later on that she would have still been conscious, in the car wreck- when I left that message.'

'Ryan...' James put his bowl down and reached for mine, but I took a deep breath and kept talking. It helped to tell someone about this. I'd never really talked much about the night mom had died.

'I left her another message about twenty minutes later, by then I was worried, because if she'd gotten the first one she'd have been coming to get me, would have called to laugh at my message and tell me not to be so cheeky. That one went to her voicemail while she was in the ambulance. It was about two hours later that my Aunt Deidre finally called me back- I had no minutes left on my phone so all I could do was receive calls, and Deidre told me to get a cab to the hospital, mom was hurt.'

I'd put my bowl on the floor, pulling my legs up to my chest, hugging my knees and looking at the sofa cushion as I spoke, not wanting to look James in the eye as I relived that awful cab ride.

'I only had twenty five bucks on me, and the cab driver was a nightmare. He said he'd only take me as far as twenty-five dollars got me, even when I told him what was happening, that I had relatives at the hospital who would pay for the rest of the ride. He was such an ass! He literally stopped the car on the side of the freeway and told me to get out, threatened me with a baseball bat when I wouldn't.'

James moved over towards me, reaching out a hand and touching the tips of his fingers to my bare toes, I closed my eyes and kept talking.

'I eventually got out, tossing the cash into the back seat as I did, it wasn't until I was a few hundred yards up the road that I realised my suitcase was still in the back seat, but that didn't matter much, I found it half a mile later- the jerk had been through it and tossed it into the ditch as well. There wasn't much missing, I was smart enough to have all my valuables in my purse, but he'd taken some of my underwear, the pig.

'Eventually I got picked up by a girl in a minivan, she was about my age, on her way home from dropping off her brother at a friends' place, and she'd seen me on her way there. When I was still walking along the side of the road on her way back, she pulled over and asked me what was going on. She took me all the way to the emergency entrance of the hospital Mom was at, even though it was about ten miles out of her way. I never even asked her name, she never asked mine, just dropped me off, waved and said 'I hope your mom is okay' before going home.'

By this time I could feel tears welling up, and I blinked hard to get rid of them. I succeeded, for the most part, but one of them slid down my nose and dropped onto my pants, but I don't think James noticed.

'I got in there and Aunt Deidre was in the waiting room- mom was still in surgery. The surgeon told us it had been a bad crash, that the truck had hit mom at about fifty miles an hour, and she had more than a few broken bones, internal bleeding, all sorts of stuff. I didn't hear most of it, I was still in a daze.

'Mom died at about one AM- internal bleeding that they couldn't find the cause of- her autopsy showed that there was an inch-wide tear in her diaphragm, just above where it's connected to the lung? She bled out and went into arrest, they couldn't get her going again.'

James moved along the sofa, sliding an arm around me and letting me cry- not saying anything, just letting me be.

---

The phone rang.

He ignored it at first, but it clicked onto his answering machine, and after his greeting had finished, an all-too-familiar voice crackled through the tiny speaker.

'Ok, you've had dinner, now I need some company so I can watch the New Yankee Workshop with someone who actually gets my satirical remarks. I know you're there, so I'll be over in ten minutes.'

It clicked off, and James looked up, horrified.

'I- I'll call him back, tell him not to come.'

I laughed at his panic, it was refreshing to see that he wasn't always totally unflustered and together.

'James, don't worry, it's fine.' I told him, wiping my eyes and feeling a grin forming in spite of myself.

'But, he'll be impossible-'

'Seriously, an evening with him here will make it easier for me to sleep- I can never settle down if I'm thinking about Mom, leave it.'

'You sure?' He was concerned, a hand on my knee, flicking his head to get his hair out of his eyes.

'I'm sure- he'll be a welcome distraction.'

So James left the answering machine, picking up our bowls and moving into the kitchen to do the dishes. I followed him, drying the bowls and saucepans in a companionable silence.

'What, you don't answer the phone anymore? It could have been one of your precious baldy kids with an emergency.'

'That would be why I have the answering machine.' James told him, not even turning around as House closed the door behind him and gave me a cursory glance.

'Where are the remotes?' he asked, thumping down on the sofa and poking around behind the cushions. I caught James' elbow and put a finger to my lips, pointing to my pocket where the remote controls were sticking out.

'No idea.' James called to him, taking them out of my pocket and aiming one at the TV- as House started to move the pillows and blanket around, James waited until he pressed a certain section of the cushion and hit the button to change the channel. From his position on the sofa, House couldn't see what James was doing, and responded to the TV by pushing again on the cushion.

I think we managed to entertain ourselves for a good five minutes before I actually laughed out loud, giving the game away. It was hilarious, watching this 'genius' tapping different sections of the cushion to see what would happen, rather than bothering to get up and pull the hide-a-bed out to find the device itself.

'Ha, ha, very funny. Check the TiVo, I know I set the reminder to tape the Workshop.' House muttered at us when he looked up and caught on. I was doubled over, sliding down the doorjamb and had to take a moment before I was calm enough to get the controller back from James, flicking to the TiVo menu and selecting the latest episode of New Yankee Workshop.

James took a seat in the single chair next to the sofa, leaving the other half of the three-seater for me. House went to stretch out along the sofa but I stopped him with a sharp glance, taking a seat at his feet and pulling his legs up onto mine, stretching him out when he started to pout.

'Remind me again why you two watch this?'

'It's an imbecile with power tools- hilarity waiting to happen.'

'You seriously think that they'll broadcast the footage if he slices a thumb off with the circular saw?'

James and Greg exchanged a glance, and after a moment James shrugged.

'It's still funny.'

'Come on- can't we watch Jeopardy or something a _little_ stimulating?' I asked, half-watching the guy on the screen hammering something with a ridiculously toothy grin on his face.

'But if this is on we can ignore it and talk.' Greg put in, reaching down to scratch his knee, his fingers brushing mine as he did. He looked up and caught my eye, gave me a small smile and gently squeezed my index finger.

In that moment I allowed myself to actually relax- he had decided to be nice, that was a huge step. I moved my hands down so they were resting on his ankles, and turned my attention back to the T.V.

--

The next morning I pulled my motorcycle up in the yellow diagonal space next to House's handicapped blue square, taking my helmet off just as a familiar yellow and orange bike idled to a stop next to me. He'd ended up leaving at around nine the night before, after I had convinced them to let me watch a documentary on Geisha training.

'Aren't you a little early?' I asked him, stepping off my bike and crossing the short distance to stand next to him.

He pretended not to hear me, getting off the bike and unclipping his cane.

_Fine. Two can play at this._ I thought to myself, turning off my ignition and striding in through the swinging doors ahead of him, biting my lip to stop myself from grinning after I let the door close behind me, hearing a satisfying _crunch_followed by a drawn-out yowl of pain from House as he got crushed by the door I'd conveniently let go about half a second after he'd decided that I was going to hold it open for him. I turned slightly to see how he would react, and he glared at me for a moment, but after a second he looked down at himself- his arms pressed together as his shoulders had been caught in the closing door, and he gave me a wry grin as he disentangled himself from the door and headed for the elevators.

--

That afternoon I was in the clinic when I spotted Lisa out of the corner of my eye, flicking through some case notes I had written up earlier.

'Dr Dalton? Do you have a moment?'

'Sure, what were you after?' I asked, dropping my most recent patients' file onto the nurses' station and crossing the waiting room to stand beside her.

'What exactly is going on between you and House?' she asked, no preamble.

I just looked at her, gobsmacked.

'N-nothing.' I managed to eventually get out, having stood there with my mouth half-open for a good few seconds.

'Well there are some pretty interesting rumours doing the rounds.'

'What?' I was still incredulous, barely able to believe that, of all people, Lisa Cuddy would take hospital gossip seriously. 'What kind of rumours?'

'Well, probably not anything you'd want your father to hear.' She made that comment lightly, but I knew that this was a serious issue.

'James already heard the rumours. He asked me about it yesterday and I told him what I'll tell you- there's nothing going on. We're friends.'

'Well as long as you know what's going on.'

'Trust me- House was probably well aware of it before either you or James got wind of what people think is going on. He's just playing up to it because that's what he does. You of all people should know that.'

Lisa gave me a discerning look, but I met her eyes steadily and gave her a half-smile.

'Come on, Lisa, how stupid do you think I am? You really believe that less than a week after meeting my biological father I would be jumping into bed with his best friend, a man almost twice my age?'

When I put it like that it sounded truly ridiculous, even to me. She accepted my words with a small smirk, and a self-depreciating laugh escaped.

'Ok, Ryan. Just make sure he keeps his hands to himself- another display like what he did to you down here yesterday- his hand on your ass as he pushed you into an exam room- and you'll find yourself labelled his girlfriend if you like it or don't.'

She turned on her red heel and went back towards her office, leaving me in the clinic to deal with the next patient on the list.

---

It took him less than 2 hours to get back at me. I should have known that getting him stuck in the entrance would earn me a fitting punishment.

As I'd only been at the hospital a few days, I had not yet thought to bring in a spare set of clothes- this was something I probably should have done on my first day- who knew when some kid in the clinic would decide to get his nosebleed all over my shirt?

At around ten AM I decided that a coffee break was in order and gave James a quick call- asking how he liked his coffee.

I had literally taken three steps out of the elevator when he got me. His cane is a perfect weapon sometimes, unseen it can be lethal. He hooked my left ankle with the handle and timed the jerk perfectly, just as my right foot was off the ground. I went sprawling on the floor, the three coffees (I had even picked one up for House, knowing he'd be loitering somewhere near James' office) spilling onto the linoleum just a second before I hit it, in my caramel pants and cream blouse.

'House!' There really wasn't much more to say- I was outraged and embarrassed, but there was little I could do. Nobody had seen him trip me- all they had noticed was me falling face-first into dark brown liquid while wearing light coloured clothing.

He smirked at me and stepped over to where I was now lying on my side, checking my wrists for fractures.

'Come on, you didn't land that hard.' He held out a hand for me to get up, just as James came out of his office to see what the commotion was all about. So, of course, all he saw was what appeared to be a random act of kindness performed by Dr Gregory House.

I think he nearly had a stroke on the spot.

'What the hell happened here?' he asked, almost running to where I was clumsily regaining my feet.

I glanced at House, whose expression was almost suspiciously cherubic, and decided not to drag James into an kind of altercation between myself and the good doctor.

'I tripped over as I came out of the elevator- must have caught my heel on the lip. Looks like someone else will have to do the coffee run.'

'Do you have any spare clothes here? This is going to take some serious detergent, coffee's really hard to get out.' James had caught my elbow as I stood up, and seemed more worried about the stains forming on my blouse than I would have given my mother credit for being.

'I don't- I was planning on bringing in some spares tomorrow.'

'Looks like you'll be in scrubs for the day, then.' House commented, using his cane to scoop the paper cups closer and poking it at anyone stupid enough to get close to the large puddle in the middle of the hallway.

'I'll let the janitor know that there's a clean-up needed, where can I get a set of scrubs?' I directed the question at James, but House answered me.

'Don't bother, I'll page him. And there's scrubs in the women's locker rooms, the cupboard next to the end shower stall.'

'I'm not even going to ask how you know that.' I told him, stepping around the puddle towards the elevators.

--

It all escalated into a full-blown war rather rapidly.

I joined James for lunch in the cafeteria, having paged House to let him know we would be at a cafe down the street and to order without us, we would both be running late. House came into the cafeteria just as we were leaving, gave me a death glare and drew a finger across his throat- I gathered he had been forced to not only eat alone, but pay his own bill. James, luckily, didn't see the threat, or the 'bring it on' gesture I gave House before heading towards the clinic.

So he decided it would be funny to drain all the gas out of my bike, leaving just enough to get a mile away from the hospital. I had to call James from the side of the road and ask him to bring me a gallon of gas, explaining the situation by telling him about my 'faulty fuel indicator- something I've been intending to replace for months'.

The next morning I caught a ride with James, went to the clinic and did my first two hours as normal. Then, removing my name from the 'available' list, I headed upstairs.

House's keys were in his backpack, and his helmet was chained to his bike. The keys to the bike, the padlock on the chain, and his apartment were all on one ring, which I pocketed before making my way downstairs.

--

James had barely pulled the Volvo to a stop outside his apartment than my cell phone started to go bananas.

I pulled it out of my pocket and prepared myself for the onslaught.

'Dalton.' I answered it, as per usual.

'Where is my bike?'

'Hi, Greg!'

'Don't you 'Greg' me, what the hell have you done with it?'

'Oh, that sucks. Look, I'll jump on mine and we can jumpstart it, okay? I'll be there in a few.'

'Dalton don't you dare-' I flipped the phone shut and looked over at James, who was understandably concerned, having only heard my end of the conversation.

'Greg's bike won't start- if I take mine back up to the hospital we might be able to jumpstart it.'

'What happens if you can't?'

'Then I give him a ride home, and we get him a replacement battery tomorrow.'

'Did you want me to come with you?'

'That's okay, you said you wanted to make those special pancakes? It'll only take me half an hour or so to get this fixed, although, you might want to make enough for three- he'll probably be pouting about the bike if we can't get it going.'

'Alright, ride safe.'

---

'What the hell do you think you're playing at?' he demanded as I skidded to a halt beside him in the parking lot. He was standing in the empty space his bike had occupied, and I had seen him pacing back and forth as I pulled in.

'Get on.' I told him. I held his helmet out to him, and after a moment of internal struggle he gave up and snatched it off me, pulled it over his greying hair and got on behind me.

'What am I supposed to do with this?' he asked, tapping my helmet with the cane.

'Wedge it between us.' I said, revving the engine. He desisted with the tapping and slid it under one arm and over the other, wrapped his arms around my waist and squeezed to let me know he was okay, we took off with a slight squeal of the tires.

I pulled up outside his place, and turned the engine off.

'Why are we stopping? Where's my bike?' he demanded as I got off, sliding forward on the seat, swinging his cane to hit the ground as I took my helmet off.

'Take a look.' I pointed to his window- I had planned this out quite extensively, and the look on his face when he realised exactly what I had done, well, it was priceless.

I'd left the light on in his living room, and his motorbike was parked in the centre of the room, right next to his piano, clearly visible from the street as I'd left the curtains open. His mouth fell open as he took his own helmet off, sitting it on my gas tank.

'Okay, okay, you've taken it too far. How am I supposed to get that out of there?' he asked, still sitting on my bike.

'If you agree to a truce, I'll help you.'

He looked at me and dug in his pocket, producing a bottle of Vicodin and dropping a pill before answering me.

'Truce.' He spat the word like it was poison, but knew that he wasn't in much of a position to argue- it would be virtually impossible for him to get the bike out by himself, and now that he'd seen what I was capable of, he had decided that it wasn't worth risking a drawn-out confrontation.

'Shake on it.' I told him, holding out my right hand.

We shook hands, and I was about to let go when he jerked me over to him, so fast that I almost fell on him, if he hadn't had his left foot planted, the two of us could have gone flying, knocking the bike over as well.

'I should spank you for such a nasty trick.' His voice had dropped half an octave, and when I looked up into his eyes, I could see that they had darkened- the heat radiating from him made me aware of where my hands had landed- one on his hip and the other on his chest. I went to pull back, but he had snaked his left arm around me, his helmet dropping to the pavement.

'I don't think I can wait a week.' he muttered, gripping me tight.

My mind was racing- at first I'd just thought that everything he'd done had been almost a self-dare, to see how far he could push the envelope when we were at the hospital, and to mess with everyone, but in that moment I realised that there might be more to it- maybe he genuinely was attracted to me.

As much as I hated to admit it, as soon as I had met him I had felt an immediate magnetism emanating from him, and it was almost irresistible. I knew I was only really holding back for James' sake, but when I was pressed up against Greg's chest it was really hard to remember all of the rational reasons to not follow through immediately with what my hormones wanted me to do.

Eventually I managed to pull myself upright and away from him, shaking my head.

'Greg, you're my dad's best friend. I barely know him, this wouldn't be right.'

'You want to. I can tell. I'm a doctor, we know these things.' He was still holding my right hand, his left palm on my hip.

'Well, I'm a doctor too, and I really don't want James having a heart attack on me before I've spent a week with him.'

'He won't have a heart attack, and if he does, we can make sure it happens somewhere he can get jumpstarted nice and quick.'

'Greg.' I pulled back, stepping away and letting go of his hand. 'I told you not yet. It's been two days since I said that, I want to form a real relationship with James before I worry about dating anyone up here.'

'Who says he has to know?'

'Oh, you don't think he'd notice me missing two or three nights a week? Or that you happened to be missing on the same nights?'

'He didn't notice any one of his three ex-Mrs-Wilson's cheating on him, why should he notice you going missing for half a week?'

'That's because back then you were distracting him. We've had a few conversations about his ex-wives, and why he thinks the marriages failed.'

He looked at me, still straddling my bike, and thought for a moment. He opened his mouth to say something else, but I forestalled him.

'Look, I think it might be a good idea for us to avoid each other for a while, professionally and personally, just to get some breathing space. I do like you, Greg, but right now my dad is more important than anything else, I need to make him my priority.'

'You sound like your father.' he muttered, but the response sounded almost automatic. He was screwing and unscrewing my petrol cap as I spoke, using the movement to distract himself, but once he'd pushed it back into the 'closed' position he pulled himself off the bike and stepped towards his apartment.

'Do you want me to help you with the bike?'

'I'll get Kutner to do it. Go home, Dr Dalton.' He closed the door behind himself, and I was left standing beside my bike, with little idea where to go from there.

--

Amazingly enough, he abided my request. I only saw him three times for the rest of the week- twice he was coming out of James' office as I was going in to join him for lunch, and on the Friday afternoon we caught the same elevator to the ground floor at the end of the day.

'Much planned for this weekend?' I asked as the elevator descended. He looked over at me, startled, and did a quick double-take.

'You're talking to me? I thought we were avoiding each other.' He looked back up at the descending numbers above the door while I spent a moment contemplating my black boots.

'We can have a casual conversation, House.' I muttered after a few seconds.

'But not casual sex?'

He uttered the last two words just as the elevator doors opened to reveal Dr Cuddy waiting on the first floor balcony.

'Nice to know he has the same level of conversation for all of us.' She said to me, making me smile as she stepped into the elevator.

I spoke to him again as he dug in his backpack for his keys, standing between his bike and mine in the parking lot.

'You know, the nurses think you've been cheating on me with Thirteen- that's why you haven't been coming down to the clinic.'

That got his attention. He stopped digging in his bag- his natural curiosity getting the better of him.

'Who told you that?'

'I have my sources. One of the girls from Radiology was telling the intake nurses something about you and that 'gorgeous brunette' on your team creating havoc with your new girlfriend.'

'You've got better ears for gossip than Wilson.'

'Must be in the genes.'

'So, they still think you're my girlfriend?'

'They've got a betting pool running on how long it is until you dump me for Thirteen.'

'Damn, you're good. It took me two years to find out about the pool that the Pathology labs had running on when Cuddy and I were going to break down and sleep together.'

'But you did that before you even started working here. One of the orderlies actually asked me if I knew about that the other day.'

'Not many of them knew that. I made three hundred bucks from that pool- I got Chase to place a wager for me.'

'You know, some of them think I'm a relative of Cuddy's, too.'

'Nobody's picked that you're Wilson's kid, yet?'

'Not even crossed their minds, or if it has, nobody's been brave enough to mention it out loud.'

He had leaned back so that he was sitting on his bike's seat as we talked, and I saw out of the corner of my eye a few nurses rubbernecking in our direction as the main doors swung open and shut.

'I think we're creating havoc at the intake desk by sitting here, together, I mean.' I mentioned, raising one eyebrow at him.

'Where are you and Wilson going for dinner tonight?'

'I'm cooking- roast lamb. Shit, I need to get home or it won't be ready until midnight.' I pulled my helmet on and kicked my bike-stand up, flicking the ignition to 'start' and starting to turn it around.

Something hard struck the side of my helmet, just once, and I turned my head to catch House's eye.

'I'll bring the mint sauce. See you at seven- and I don't like roast pumpkin.'

--

It was about halfway through dinner that I think I realised what the change was- I might as well have been his kid sister. He smacked me in the ankle with his cane as he came inside, and teased me about the smudge on my white shirt from reaching into the oven to check the potatoes. James had noticed too- it was a subtle dynamic change, but he was aware of these things.

'What happened?' he asked me as we were piling the dishes in the sink. House was reclining at the dining table, finishing his beer.

'What do you mean?'

'You two are suddenly friends again. Don't think I haven't noticed you avoiding him all week, it felt like I was living two lives.'

'We've agreed to play nice- if we hadn't we'd have killed each other by now.'

'I heard about the trick with his bike- he called Chase to help him in the end- Chase called me to ask why I wasn't helping him extract the thing from his living room.'

'We called a truce.'

'Well that's good to hear. Let's leave these and play some poker- the chips are in that cupboard, I'll grab the cards.'

--

The next afternoon I was back in the clinic- dong some extra hours to work up some time in lieu, and knowing that when I started full-time in the pathology lab I'd be lucky to get away with one five-day week a month.

I had just finished with my tenth patient for the day when I looked up at the clock, realising just how late it was. I was a little lightheaded, but had dismissed it as tiredness. I picked up a patients' file, turning towards exam room one, and had my hand on the doorknob when everything went black.

--------


	3. Chapters 11 and 12

--

Wilson

--

Cuddy paged me to come down to the clinic. I was with a patient, but managed to get it wrapped up within a few minutes and called the clinic desk from my office before going down there, making sure that the issue couldn't be sorted out over the phone.

'Dr Wilson, hold on for a moment, Dr Cuddy wants to speak to you.'

The nurse handed me to Cuddy, and the first sentence she uttered immediately made me tense.

'Don't panic, Ryan's okay.'

'What?'

'She collapsed, about to see a patient. She's still unconscious, in the ICU. She's breathing on her own, but from what Cameron's told me it looks like she might be in a coma.'

'A coma? Where is she?'

'ICU- bed three.'

I tossed the phone back into its' cradle, racing out of my office and taking the stairs two at a time, knowing I wouldn't have the patience to wait for the elevator.

I barrelled into House on the first floor, where the ICU was located. He had been walking past the stairwell door when I came out of it at top speed and we went sprawling across the corridor.

'What the hell? Why are you in such a hurry?' House asked from his position pinned under me. His cane had gone flying and I could see an orderly picking it up and coming over to see if we were okay.

'Ryan's in a coma.' I muttered at him, pulling myself up and offering him a hand.

He took the hand and looked up at me, his eyes wide with concern. I hadn't seen that expression since Stacy had left to be with Mark.

'Where is she?' he asked, snatching his cane away from the orderly without even glancing at the guy.

'Thank-you.' I said to the orderly, on autopilot compensating for House's lack of social skills. 'She's in the ICU.' I told House, who spun on his cane and started striding down the corridor ahead of me.

She was on a bed, still in her black pants and the shirt she had been wearing that morning when I'd driven her to the hospital. Her shoes had been taken off and placed on the trolley at the foot of her bed, and there was a drip in her left hand, along with an oxygen tube under her nose.

'She's stable, it's not too bad, she's breathing on her own and her heart rate's fine. She just collapsed in the clinic, we thought maybe she'd just overworked herself and passed out, but she wasn't responsive at all...' Cuddy was at the foot of the bed, Ryan's chart in her hand and seemed to be talking extra fast as a kind of coping mechanism.

'What triggered it?' House asked, snatching the chart from Cuddy.

The two of them started discussing possible diagnoses while I took a few steps towards the woman in a coma on the bed in front of me. House was right- she did have my eyes, but at the moment they were closed. She was breathing ok, her heart rate was fine and blood pressure stable. There would have been a full blood panel taken, to try and determine the cause, but if it had been less than ten minutes since she'd collapsed then the results would still be twenty minutes away.

'There's nothing about diabetes on her chart, why not?' House was asking Cuddy.

'She never mentioned it.'

'Get her file from NYU- she's a type 1 diabetic, diagnosed when she was around twelve, there should be something on it-'

'She's diabetic?' I interrupted House's barrage. I'd known her for barely a fortnight, but being a type 1 diabetic was the kind of information that was useful to know if you were a close relative.

'She never told you, either? House, what else do you know that we don't?' Cuddy demanded.

'She's been having stomach pains over the last few weeks, and migraines since she was sixteen.'

My head was spinning. House knew all this, but this was my daughter! Why was she telling him and not me?

'When did she tell you all this?'

'She didn't. I guessed most of it, she confirmed it when I asked. The diabetes was pretty obvious, didn't you notice the puncture marks on her stomach? She's been injecting insulin for years, not to mention the alternating left and right hand pinkie finger band-aids for the daily blood glucose checks. When I saw the Imigran script on her bedside table I asked about the migraines, and the stomach pains, well, she's been taking ibuprofen for a lot longer than a period lasts.'

I was aghast. Sure, House was observant and paid meticulous attention to detail, but how had I missed all that? I looked down at Ryan, her dark hair spread out on the pillow, and wondered what else she hadn't told me and more importantly, why.

'What have you got in her history?' I asked Cuddy, pointing at the file House was still holding.

'Just what she put on her emergency contact- we can get some of it from you I suppose, but her mothers' side...'

'I know most of Adi's history- she went into hospital when we were together, she got a bad staph infection and I helped her fill out the forms. In fact, I can probably call McGill and see if I can't get Adi's records faxed over.' I reached into my pocket and extracted my cell phone, flicking it open and starting to dial directory assistance.

'You're not a relative.' Cuddy put in.

'But her daughter's in critical care, and I'm pretty sure they'll let me bend the rules. McGill University Hospital, please.'

--

House

--

Forty minutes after she'd collapsed we had her blood panel back, Wilson's entire family's medical history laid out and a faxed copy of Adriana Dalton's records on the table in my conference room. Ryan was stable, still unconscious, and so had been moved out of ICU and into a room just around the corner.

'There's nothing wrong, except that she's in a coma. Blood sugar and insulin levels are within normal range, all her enzymes and platelets are fine.' I was addressing a room full of people, an attempt to send Wilson and Cuddy to his office had failed dismally- he had wheeled my desk chair into the conference room and was sitting on that, Cuddy was leaning against the doorjamb, biting a thumbnail.

'Differential diagnosis for a coma?' I asked those assembled.

'This is Dr Dalton- the doctor who was helping us last week, all of a sudden she's in an unexplained coma?' Thirteen was looking at the file, and her eyes widened when she got to the medical history.

'She's your daughter?' It was Taub who made that brilliant deduction, spotting 'James Wilson' under the 'father' tab. He was looking up at Wilson, one eyebrow raised. I interrupted the family history moment and attempted to bring the conversation back towards being helpful.

'No, we're just using his name because it said John Doe on the birth certificate and he seemed like a good stand-in. Differential diagnosis for a coma!' I rapped my cane on the whiteboard, where so far there was one four-letter word, and it wasn't one of my personal favourites. My attempt to get back to the diagnosis failed, because Thirteen was looking at Wilson, too. At least Kutner seemed somewhat interested in the medicine.

'What happened before the coma?'

'Thank-you, Kutner, for finally getting back to the point. She was in the clinic- she's been there all week.'

'Her blood sugar was normal when she went under?'

'As far as we know- it's normal now and there was no spike in her insulin or sugar levels.' Thirteen was reading the chart Cuddy had bought in from Ryan's room. I snatched it out of her hand and scanned it- there was literally nothing there to have caused this. Wilson's history had nothing in it so suggest she would be prone to anything that would cause a sudden coma, and her mother's was equally empty.

'Take her down for an MRI, get a full tox screen including a hair sample to check her history. She's been taking ibuprofen for the last week, she could have overdosed accidentally.'

The three fellows got to their feet and practically bolted out the door, leaving me standing there with my patients' father and the closest thing she was likely to have to a mother at this point.

The last place I wanted to be right at that moment was in that room, but there was nothing left that I could do that wouldn't seem suspicious.

'I'm going to check on her.' Wilson announced to the room in general.

'I'll come with you.' Cuddy agreed, and they left almost as quickly as the fellows had.

I went through the glass door and into my office, tossed my cane onto my desk and sunk into my chair. Rubbing my temples, I began to think, but kept getting distracted.

By god, she was beautiful. That was what had caught my attention in the first place, that and the audacity she showed by putting Cuddy's name on that clinic form.

Every time I tried to think about her symptoms, well, singular symptom, my mind would wander to the feeling of her sleeping next to me. I could still hardly believe that Wilson had let that happen and not attempted to kill me- but it hadn't seemed like a big deal. It had been the middle of the afternoon when I'd fallen asleep next to her on those red sheets, admittedly he hadn't been there, and when he had seen us I'd managed to make it look a lot more innocent than it felt.

I had been on the point of smacking her one when she took my Vicodin the next day, it was only the massage and heat mat that stopped me. At least she'd been sensible enough to give the bottle back.

That kiss, the one on the parking lot, had been initially just a stir-up for the gossips, but I had allowed myself to linger for a few seconds. I had enjoyed it, and from the look she gave me, so had she. I couldn't help myself, I had to pursue it.

I hadn't expected her to be so, well, adult about it all. Pinning her to the wall in the exam room had been total instinct, letting my baser urges take over and not thinking about consequences. When she asked me to leave her alone, I considered for a moment perhaps tormenting her, but knew that if the decision had to be made, I could well lose Wilson if his daughter decided to hate me. It was all well and good to estrange his wives, but so far he had shown more dedication and interest in this girl in a fortnight than he had shown to any of his three ex-wives.

And now she was in a coma, in a room just around the corner. We'd started talking again, and I was planning on taking a bottle of whisky to Wilson's place that night to get them both drunk and see what kind of information I would be able to extract from each of them.

Wilson and Cuddy were still in her room when I went up there, still unable to think straight. Wilson was sitting on the chair next to her head and Cuddy was perched on the arm of it, both of them were looking at her as if they would be able to will her out of the coma.

Thirteen was in the room, too, taking a blood sample for the tox screen and as I watched from the hallway she reached up and pulled a hair from the crown of Ryan's head.

She didn't react, I didn't expect her too, but both Cuddy and Wilson winced.

I spun on my cane and went up to the nurse's station, called the MRI team and booked the machine for the next gap available.

--

Wilson

--

I've never felt so helpless in my life.

Thirteen came in to take a hair sample, and I just sat there like a lump, holding my daughters' hand and praying for a response. I caught a glimpse of House walking past, heading for the nurse's station, no doubt to book the MRI machine. Cuddy was sitting on the arm of my chair, looking about as lost as I felt. I had no doubt that within her own head she was taking on the 'mother' figure, and I was more than willing to let her do that.

Thirteen took some blood and a few strands of hair, leaving the room quite fast. I could tell she was uncomfortable, hell, we all were. They'd only just met this girl and now not only was she in a coma, but she was my daughter. It was a lot to take in over a period of less than an hour.

'What am I going to do?' I muttered, half to myself. I felt Cuddy put a hand on my shoulder, giving me a squeeze.

'She'll be fine. House is brilliant, he'll figure this out.'

'But there's literally nothing there. No reason.'

'There has to be a cause, people don't just lapse into a coma for no reason.'

I looked up at her and she gave me a strained smile, I knew she was trying to be positive because that was what I needed, but there was nothing anyone could really do.

--

House

--

That night when Wilson and Cuddy had gone home I was still in my office, surfing the internet aimlessly and trying to think.

After almost an hour of Google-searching the terms coma and comatose to see if perhaps there was an exotic disease that led to comas that I hadn't thought of, I turned my monitor off and made my way over to Ryan's room.

She looked like she was asleep, her heart rate and blood pressure were normal, but according to the chart she was still unresponsive to stimulus and her pupils were barely moving.

I sat on the end of the bed, resting my cane alongside her and looked at the monitors.

'No change yet?'

I almost fell off the bed- I thought Wilson had gone home hours ago, but apparently he had decided to come back after taking a shower. He was in dark blue sweats and a pair of all-stars, carrying what looked like a casserole dish.

He took a seat on the chair next to her bed and set the dish down on the trolley-table that would normally hover over Ryan's bed.

'Go find some forks, will you?' he asked, taking the lid off of it and letting the smell waft out. I had realised about an hour earlier that I was starving, so wasted no time hobbling back to my office to retrieve two forks from my desk and dragging my computer chair back to Ryan's room.

We sat in silence as we ate whatever it was Wilson had made while he had been at home- there was turkey in it and that's about all I'd be able to tell you- I occasionally glanced up at the screen above her right shoulder with her vitals scrolling across it, and a couple of times I caught Wilson doing the same.

'What are we going to do if we can't figure this out?' he asked me.

'We'll figure it out.'

The silence fell again, and I kept eating long after Wilson had put his fork down and resumed his staring match with the LCD.

'I'm going to get some sleep.' He told me about an hour later.

'What, here?'

'There's half a dozen bunks in the on-call room, I want to be here if her condition changes. What are you going to do? Hang from the rafters?'

'That's your ex-girlfriends' job.' I muttered.

'Amber never hung from the rafters.'

'You were only with her for three weeks, you have no idea what her real sleeping habits were like.'

He just shook his head, letting the subject drop and leaving the room, taking the now-empty casserole dish with him. I was left sitting in my computer chair next to his daughter, having my own stare-down with the monitor.

--

A few hours later I was stretched out on one of the on-call cots trying in vain to get to sleep when I heard the door to the room slide open. Wilson was snoring on another one of the cots on the opposite side of the room, and didn't even stir as the door clicked shut.

Thirteen crossed the room and sat down on the edge of the cot I was occupying.

'How is she?' she asked as I sat up and rubbed my eyes.

'Like you haven't just been up there to check on her.' Thirteen gave me a slight nod and I took my cue. 'She's still out to it and you're not here for no reason. Which test came back positive?'

'Not a one. The MRI just came back, though, I thought you'd want to see the films.' She pulled a large yellow envelope out from under her arm and handed it to me, reaching above my head to flick the light on. As she leaned over me I closed my eyes and took a deep breath in, an automatic reaction to having a female body so close to me. She smelled nice, like soap, with a hint of peppermint.

I pulled the MRI films out and looked at them- there were six sheets, each with nine frames, and not one abnormal thing in any of them.

'Damn.' I muttered, dropping the films and envelope onto the floor. Thirteen reached down and slid them back into order, folding the envelope closed and studying her feet.

'I'll put them with her chart. Try and get some sleep. You want me to come find you when the rest of the team get here?'

'Don't bother- page me if anything else happens.'

She left the room and I rolled onto my side, massaging my leg and trying to think.

I found myself at three AM standing over her bed, twirling my cane and feeling as useless as I ever had.

She hadn't moved, hadn't made a noise, and still looked like she was just sleeping. I hooked my cane on her drip-stand and dropped the bed-rail with as little noise as I could manage. I remembered being in a bed like this, not moving. When Cuddy had put me in my Ketamine coma, I'd been aware of people around me, remembered Wilson talking to her about the recovery, talking to me when it was just the two of us in the room. It was fuzzy, like dream memories, but I had been aware of them.

'Ryan, we need you to wake up. We can't figure this out if you can't tell us where it hurts. I know you're in pain- your heart rate looks normal, but normal for you is about fifty beats per minute when you're asleep.' I reached out, took her hand and gave it a squeeze, imagining that I could feel her squeezing back.

'Your dad needs you to wake up, he's only just found you and it'd kill him to lose you now.' I paused, not wanting to admit what I was thinking, but knowing that it might help, I forced myself to say it.

'I think I need you to wake up, too.'

--

Wilson

--

I found House the next day, asleep in the chair next to Ryan's bed, his cane hanging from her drip stand, his head resting on his arms, which were crossed on the edge of her bed. He was holding her hand in his, and I'd never seen him look so helpless.

I stepped back out of the room quietly, and a few minutes later came back in with a table on wheels, rattling it and the door much more than necessary to announce my arrival.

His head jerked up and he looked at me with dopey eyes, blinking and running a hand through his hair, dropping Ryan's fingers as he sat back in the chair.

'Breakfast?' I asked, proffering the tray.

'Coffee would be better.' he muttered at me, taking a slice of toast and folding it in half, pushing the entire piece of bread into his mouth at once and chewing awkwardly.

'Do you have to eat it like that?' I asked, selecting a piece myself and tearing it into more manageable pieces before taking a few unenthusiastic bites.

'Yes. Where's the TV remote?' he was leaning back in his chair as he asked, and I handed it to him over Ryan's prone form. I looked down at her as he found Good Morning America, and took her wrist to check her pulse manually. The monitors were all well and good, but at heart I'm an old-schooler and still prefer to check blood pressure with a cuff and stethoscope rather than finding a machine.

We'd eaten breakfast and House had wandered off, muttering something about the bathroom and coffee, when Cuddy came in to check on Ryan.

'Still no change?'

'Not a flicker. House was here all night, he'd tell me if something had changed.'

'You were here, too, your car hasn't moved.'

'I slept in the on call room.'

'Where did House sleep?'

'There.' I pointed to the chair on the other side of the bed and Cuddy shook her head.

'He could care less about any other patient, this one he spends a night in one of our chairs at her bedside. I swear I'll never understand that man.'

'That's the aim.' House was back, balancing two coffee cups in his spare hand as he hobbled through the open door behind Cuddy. 'Coffee.' He handed the top cup to me and resumed his seat next to my daughter.

'Wilson, can I talk to you for a moment? In the hall?' Lisa motioned me out of the room, and with a quick glance back at the pair in the room, I put my coffee cup down and followed her to the other side of the sliding glass door.

'Are you sure there's nothing going on with them?' she asked me, motioning at House still sitting vigil beside Ryan.

'I sleep in the next room, he's crashed at my place a couple of times, but trust me, there's nothing there but an almost sibling-style friendship. Didn't you catch the near-war that broke out earlier this week?'

'What war?' her eyebrows drew together as she tried to think about the events of the past week.

'Well, Ryan explained to me what happened- she managed to wedge him in one of the doors out the front, and he retaliated by tripping her when she was carrying a tray of coffees. She wound up in scrubs for the rest of the day- you don't remember that?'

'I remember the scrubs, but the war must have been pretty quiet.'

'Maybe I was the only one who noticed- I do spend most of my time with them.'

'So there's definitely nothing else going on with them?'

'Nothing.'

'So that shouldn't worry me?' she pointed over my shoulder and I turned to see House brush Ryan's hair back from her face, lean down and press his lips very gently to hers.

--

Wilson

--

I'm pretty sure if Cuddy hadn't grabbed me by the elbow at that very moment that I would have gone directly through the glass and throttled him.

'Let me go!' I muttered, feeling my teeth clench and hands curling into fists. It didn't matter that he was my best friend, didn't matter that she was a grown woman, all I saw at that moment was a dirty old man kissing my baby girl.

I hadn't realised until that point just how much of the paternal instinct I had in me.

'Let him be, he'll have his reasons.' Cuddy told me.

'Let go!' I said again, struggling against her and pressing a palm to the glass. The noise made House look up, and the only positive thing I can say about that moment is that he had the decency to turn red and avert his eyes.

I glared at him through the glass- looking back I'm surprised that the panel didn't start to melt - I was so angry. He stood up and took his cane off her drip stand, hobbled to the door and came out into the hallway where Cuddy was still restraining me. Never one to back away from a fight, he didn't try and pivot on his cane and head for his office, he turned directly towards us and looked me right in the eye.

'What the _hell_ was that?' I demanded as Cuddy finally let me go. I took three very fast steps right up to House, not caring that he was a good few inches taller than me and still more than ready to deck him in spite of the cane.

'You know, I've been in a coma before.'

'That was different.'

'She can hear us, Jimmy. I thought maybe something I said would help.'

'Kissing my daughter is not _helping!'_

He avoided my gaze and muttered something that, close as I was, I didn't catch.

'What?' I snapped at him, and he looked up at me, repeating the sentence.

'I think I love her.'

For the second time in as many minutes I almost fell over. There were few things that Gregory House could say that would truly shock me, and that was one of them.

'You've known her, what, two weeks?'

'You were about to punch me and you've known her for less time than I have.'

'She's my _daughter.'_

'What, I can't feel anything for her because she happens to be your kid?'

'House...' I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose, feeling a headache starting to build behind my eyes. 'House, she's half your age!'

He just looked at me, and raised an eyebrow.

'How old is Amber?'

'That's different! For a start, I'm four years younger than you are!'

'Oh, and that makes such a difference! Just because I'm the same age as her dad I'm not allowed to find her attractive?'

'You're feeling fatherly because she's my daughter and you wish she was yours. Get out. Get away from her. I don't care if you're her attending, you're not coming back into her room.' I shoved past him and into her room, fiddling with the blinds and eventually managing to shut the room off from the rest of the hospital, sliding the door closed and taking a seat next to my baby girl.

I took her hand in mine and looked at her, wondering what the hell I was going to do.

--

House

--

He actually took it a hell of a lot better than I had any right to expect him to. I had looked up and seen Cuddy talking to him, then taken a huge risk kissing her, more than half expecting to get caught I suppose.

I went back to my office and scooped my tennis ball up with the handle of my cane, bouncing it off the wall and thinking about how badly I had just screwed up.

--

Wilson

--

'It's not that bad.' Cuddy was trying to console me, and for once I was acting like the stubborn jerk of the piece.

I was sitting beside Ryan, her hand in mine, steadfastly avoiding Cuddy's gaze and trying desperately to will my daughter back into animation.

'He's twice her age.'

'How old was Amber?' she asked, which did actually shut me up for a moment. I'd ignored that particular part of House's argument, knowing that it was probably going to be my undoing.

'That was different. She was very... mature.' I said after a moment of silence. That was a lie and we both knew it- she had dumped me with an ultimatum- either House went or she did, and the decision was a no-brainer. The sex might have been amazing, but as House and his team rightly assured me, she was nothing but a Cut-Throat Bitch.

'How is this any different to him having a relationship with Cameron?'

'That wasn't a relationship- she had a crush on him and manipulated situations so they appeared to be together. She had to blackmail him into the one date they did go on.'

'She must have reciprocated- he might be an ass but he's not insane.'

'How do we know that? How do we know he's not just imagining it? How long has it been since he's had intimacy that he hasn't paid for? For all we know her being nice to him has been interpreted as a relationship.'

'He's not delusional.'

'He could be- he's been taking at least twice his prescribed Vicodin dose lately.'

'No he hasn't- even Thirteen commented that the bottle has been appearing a lot less than usual. She asked what was going on, wondered if he'd been given a raise or something and that was why he was all happy.'

'She said he was happy?' I immediately knew that I shouldn't have asked. If he was happy and it was Ryan causing it then I wouldn't have a leg to stand on if there was something between them- I'd always said that the only thing I wanted for Greg was for him to be happy.

'She said he seemed less miserable. And he's been making my life less miserable lately, which said to me that he'd either found someone else to torture, or something was helping him.'

I looked away from her and out the window into the early-autumn morning. There were squirrels, three of them, acting like maniacs under the tree outside the window- I could see them running in crazy circles from my position above their level. One darted up the tree and almost to my eye level, the other two remained on the ground, staring at each other, almost appearing to have a conversation, before one bolted away and the other pursued the first one up the tree and began chasing it through the branches.

'Ryan, I need you to wake up.' I told her, squeezing her hand tight.

'I'll go get you a coffee.' Cuddy said, leaving the room, leaving me to my thoughts and the squirrels.

--

House

--

I decided to go for a walk to clear my head, but got ambushed by Thirteen just outside my office.

'There you are- I was worried you'd have gone home. We might have found something.'

'What?' I was still thrown by her sudden appearance, and what she was wearing didn't help. It was early autumn, so it was still warm, but she was in tight blue jeans and a red tank top, a strip of bare belly exposed over her black leather belt. Given, it was a Sunday, but normally she at least pretended to make an effort and be a little professional.

'It might be nothing, but Kutner spotted it and thought you should see- it could explain why Ryan is in that coma.'

Ryan's name snapped me out of my stupor- she seemed to realise that was what I was responding to, and kept talking about the results.

'The test results are with Taub and Kutner, they've tested her for everything we can think of and he's got something in the lab that you'll want to see.

I got up so fast I actually left my cane behind, and didn't realise until we were about ten paces down the hallway. Thirteen sure noticed, especially when I caught her by the shoulder and put almost all of my weight on her every second step.

'Are you going to be okay?' she asked, sliding an arm around my waist to better support me. I just grunted and kept walking, eventually half-collapsing into a chair when we finally got to the lab right up the other end of the building.

'What have you found?'

'The first tox screen may have had a false negative.' Taub told me, holding up a printout.

'Or this could be a false positive.' Kutner shot back, grabbing the printout and bringing two sheets over to me. 'The first tox had no traces of opiates- the second test using the same blood sample had a significantly higher level of what looks like either heroin, morphine or something else in that family.'

'Like Vicodin.' Taub put in over his shoulder, totally unnecessarily.

'I haven't been slipping her anything, if that's your question.' I told them, taking my pills out and rattling the bottle far more than necessary as I swallowed one. 'Do a third test, and see what comes up two out of three.'

'It's running now.' Kutner told me. 'We'll have results in three minutes.'

'You dragged me up here for a maybe?' I asked Thirteen, glaring at her far more than was necessary.

'There's something else. Here.' She handed me another MRI sheet, this one had a large black circle around one image.

'What am I looking at?'

'That.' she pointed at a bright white spot- a tiny pinprick just above Ryan's hypothalamus. It was barely noticeable, and I ran my fingers over it to make sure that it wasn't in fact a hole in the ink or the film.

'It's a micro-tumor. If we take some more images at higher resolution and better magnification we'll be able to locate it exactly and if need be, we can remove it. If it's sitting where I think it is, then it's the cause.'

'It's above her hypothalamus- if it's actually touching that part of her brain, or if its' expanded and started to touch that part of her brain, it could be secreting enough chemicals to shut her down like this.' I touched the spot again and looked at Thirteen.

'The MRI is booked for noon- I may have faked your signature to get it so early.' she confessed, and I just smiled at her.

'You're learning well.'

'Tox screen's printing.' Kutner called across the lab.

'What does it say?'

'Negative.' he said, sounding somewhat disappointed.

'So two of three say I'm not dosing her. Let's wait and see what this MRI says about the micro-tumour and go from there. Now, someone go get my cane so I can get myself back to my office.'

--

Wilson

--

Cuddy told me about the micro tumour about seven minutes after I'd gotten House's page telling me what his team had found and that as her medical emergency contact I'd have to be the man to sign the approval for brain surgery on the daughter I'd barely known a month.

'Just do the surgery. I'll be waiting in the lounge. And try to keep as much of her hair on her head as possible- if there's any trace of me in those genes she'll be devastated if we cut it all off.'

I signed the forms and sat back to wait while the OR was prepped.

'Did you want to observe?' Cuddy asked quietly as one of the nurses parted my beautiful daughters' dark hair and shaved a very precise inch-square area right on the crown of her head, plastering the rest of the strands down and keeping them in place with a handful of black barrettes.

'I think I'll just stay here. Let me know how it goes, okay?' I dropped Ryan's hand a few minutes later as she was wheeled out and up the hallway to the elevators, taking her towards the surgical wing.

--

House

--

I was seated in the observation deck, biting a thumbnail so hard that when Cuddy came into the room behind me I actually tore so much off that it began to bleed.

'Knock, next time.' I told her, having spat the piece of nail out so that I could suck on the wound I'd created.

'How's she doing?' Cuddy asked, ignoring me as usual.

'Fine, so far. They put a local anaesthetic in her skull so if she wakes up they'll be able to tell, and they've got her pretty firmly restrained, head in callipers, arms strapped to the chair.'

'Any change?'

'Her heart rate spiked to just over 110 when they started drilling, which could mean that she can still hear a little.'

'That's good, if she can hear she might be coming out of it.'

'Well, we'll know for sure, soon, Foreman's about to put the needle into the co-ordinates of the tumour and try to pull most of the cells out. He's going to freeze the bad cells and pretty much vacuum everything out that's below zero.'

'And that should wake her up.' Cuddy said, more to herself than anything. I'd explained the theory we'd come up with to both her and Wilson, although I got the feeling that Wilson wasn't really listening until I told him that it might wake her up.

--

Ryan

--

The room was hot, and I couldn't move my arms.

My eyes fluttered open and I was looking at my own knees, in a hospital gown. I glanced around, slightly panicked, wondering what had happened that I was sitting down with my head so far forward and in a gown. I caught a glimpse of a pair of scrub-covered feet and looked up as far as I could, realising that I couldn't move my head. I could hear voices and cleared my throat to ask a very pressing question.

'Wh- where am I?' I asked, my voice was scratchy and barely there. I swallowed and tried again.

'Hello? Which OR am I in?' I asked, my voice gathering strength.

A pair of bright blue eyes, for a fleeting second I thought it was House, leaned down into my field of vision.

'She's awake. Can you hear me?' The voice had a strange accent, Australian or maybe South African.

I tried to nod, but my head still wouldn't move.

'Yes.' I croaked, and the blue eyes gave someone a thumbs up.

'We're just about to close you up- you've just had a tumour removed from your hypothalamus. It caused a coma, you've been out of it for almost thirty six hours. We'll get you closed up and out into recovery in a few minutes.'

'A tumour?' I asked, my mind reeling.

'It's okay, if you're awake that means we must have got most of it. Just relax, we'll have you in recovery soon and you can ask House anything else you think of.'

'House?'

'He's your attending. Relax, Ryan, he's taken pretty good care of you.'

'What about Wilson?'

'Your dad's fine, he'll be waiting in recovery, too.'

There went my hopes of being discreet about my relationship to James. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

'Did you want anything else?' blue eyes asked me.

'Can I get some music to block out that noise?' I asked, referring to the tap-tap and occasional metal-against-bone scraping that was making me shudder.

'Here.' He reached up and put a set of ear buds on me and clicked an iPod to life.

'Beethoven okay?' he asked, flipping through the selection.

'Got any Tchaikovsky?' I asked, half-joking.

'Of course. Here.' He flicked to 'T' before pressing 'play' and leaving the iPod on a steel table next to me.

--

I got to recovery with the headphones still on, listening to Chopin by then, and thinking about the implications of what blue-eyes-the-Aussie had told me. He knew that Wilson was my dad, and House had been my attending while I was out to it.

I wondered what had happened while I was unconscious, but stopped wondering when the door of the recovery room slid open and James stepped in, followed by Lisa. Greg was notable only by his absence, but I didn't mention it, just smiled at my Dad and assured him I was okay before he even opened his mouth to ask.

'I'm feeling a bit queasy, but that will probably just be the anaesthetic. How long have I been unconscious?'

'Almost two days.'

'Oh, no.'

James looked a little concerned at my reaction, but I avoided his gaze as best I could, concentrating on finding Lisa's eyes, and she gave me a warm smile.

'Can I get something to eat?' I asked, preventing the mood from going further into awkward.

'Sure, Ryan. What are you hungry for?'

'This is going to sound stupid, but I'm really craving chocolate custard, the baby-food variety with just a hint of the chocolate taste.'

'I'll see what I can do, but you might have to wait an hour or so before you'll be able to actually keep anything down. You do remember you've just had brain surgery?'

'Yeah, I know. When can I get back to my room?'

'Soon.'

'How soon is soon?'

'Soon, ok sweetie?' James almost laughed then, and I felt better that I'd managed to lighten the mood a little.

'Where's House?' I asked, and as soon as I'd said it, Lisa stopped smiling and James' face turned approximately the colour of a thundercloud.

I got the feeling that I had somehow, once again, managed to fit a size eleven foot into my size nine mouth.

--

James and Lisa both looked down at me for a few moments, before Lisa finally broke the silence.

'Are you going to be honest with us?' She seemed concerned.

'About what?' I looked from one to the other, and James appeared to have his jaw clenched, but managed to speak.

'About House- about why he thought that kissing you would be a good way to get you out of your coma.'

'What?!' I clutched my head as soon as I'd spoken- the shock of what my father had said sent my head spinning, creating a jolt of pain from the nape of my neck to the back of my eyes. I caught my forehead with one palm and realised that there were bandages wrapped around my skull.

It wasn't completely unexpected, logically I knew that I'd undergone brain surgery, and would more than likely have lost a chunk of my hair, but the feeling of the rough texture of the bandages under my fingers really hammered the message home.

'What did House do?' I asked as the pain receded, tracing my fingers along the bandages, trying to gauge how much of my hair was actually missing.

'He diagnosed your coma, for one.' Lisa put in, but James wasn't letting go of the subject.

'After he decided that the best way to wake you up short of brain surgery would be to kiss you.' His jaw was definitely clenched, I could see his teeth grinding together as he spoke. 'Tell me, Ryan, why would he think such a thing?'

I felt like I was sixteen again, answering to my mother about why my prom date and I had spent so long parked in his fathers' Mustang under the street light in front of my childhood home.

'You'll probably need to ask him, for one thing I was in a coma at the time.' I bit back, realising that he was questioning the wrong person entirely and deciding to point that out to him.

'He must have had his reasons! You must have said or done something to make him think it was okay!' James seemed to be searching for reassurance that House's actions weren't baseless. I looked him straight in the eye and searched his expression for a few seconds, before reaching a conclusion.

'Lisa, do you mind finding Greg? I think I'd rather have him here to defend himself when I condemn him to my fathers' righteous indignation.'

Cuddy nodded at me, a small smile tugging at her features, and she left the room.

'Why him, Ryan?' James asked, slumping into a chair. 'Why not Chase? Or Foreman? Or, or... Thirteen!?'

'Well, for one thing I'm straight. And Thirteen might be attractive, but she's still female, definitely not my type.'

'Why House?'

'You already know the answer to that, James. You're the one who let him help you destroy three marriages.'

He rested his head in his hands for a few moments, but jerked his head up when the door clicked softly open.

'You rang?' Greg was trying to be blithe, and failed dismally.

'Yes, I did. The two of you are going to tell me what the hell is going on- and you're going to do it now.'

'What do you want me to tell you, James?' Greg walked around the bed, hanging his cane on my drip-stand and pretending to inspect the LCD that had my vitals scrolling across it. His attention to the screen drew my eyes to it and I saw that my heart rate was steadily going up.

'I want you to tell me what the hell is going on.'

'I already told you.'

'Fine. I want you to tell her.'

'I think she already knows.'

The two of them arguing over the top of my bed was definitely disconcerting. I'd been hoping to break any kind of news about any involvement with House in less, well, confrontational circumstances.

'What the hell are you playing at, House? She's my daughter!' James' face was steadily getting redder, and I got the distinct impression that had my heart-rate monitor been on him that he would be spiking somewhere around 120 beats per minute.

'You've known her three weeks.'

'So have you!'

'Would you be so upset if she was just another patient?'

'She's half your age!'

'You didn't answer the question.'

James stared at the floor, I could practically see the cogs turning in his head. House had asked the key question, and it meant that Dr Wilson was forced to examine his motives.

I got the feeling that it was usually House who put him in these situations, and he resented it. It took him almost three whole minutes, and my heart rate was back to almost-normal, before he answered. I could barely hear him, but his words were distinct.

'No, I wouldn't.'

The two of them left my room pretty soon after that, and in spite of the coma I'd been in for the last little while, I felt exhaustion overwhelm me and fell into a deep sleep.


	4. Chapter 13

---

I was woken up a few hours later by a nurse gently shaking my shoulder, holding out a cup of pills and a glass of water.

'Pain meds?' I asked, taking the tiny plastic cup from her and inspecting the contents.

'And an antibiotic.'

'Well, the last thing I want is for the hole in my head to get infected. Amoxicillin and... what is that?' I used my pinkie finger to shuffle the pills around, dislodging the red and yellow amoxicillin capsule and flipping the other pill over so that I could read the numbers stamped onto the back of it.

'It's 800 milligrams of ibuprofen, for the swelling and the pain.'

'Haven't seen red ibuprofen in ages...' I muttered to myself, tipping the pills into my mouth and taking the glass of water proffered by the nurse, swallowing my meds like a good little patient.

'Please tell me that you questioned her before you swallowed those.' The good Dr House had materialised at the door of my room without either me or my nurse noticing. She gave him a sidelong glance before grabbing the empty water jug from the table next to my bed and making a fairly speedy exit.

'Of course,' I told him, 'How stupid do you think I am? Pass me that, when you're done. I want to know what happened in surgery.'

He'd taken my chart out from the end of my bed, flipping through the pages and extracting a pen from a pocket in his jeans and making some notes on it before handing it to me.

I gave the chart a cursory glance, noting the dosage that my attending physician had recommended and that it did tally with what I'd just swallowed. I didn't go any further than the front page, instead I lifted my eyes and saw House studying me, one hand rubbing the back of his neck as he rested most of his weight on his good leg.

'What are you doing back here, Dr House? You know my father will blow a gasket if he comes in and sees you here.'

'I'm your attending. I can be here.'

'You're tempting fate.'

'I know.'

'And you don't care, either, do you?'

'Not particularly. Wilson will get over it.'

'Somehow I don't think he's quite as resilient as you think he is.'

'What makes you say that?'

'Well, the expression on his face is a fair giveaway.' I nodded to the doorway behind House, and the tall, greying doctor turned around to face my father, whose face was roughly the colour of a thundercloud.

'Out, House. Now.'

I swear, even with the limp, House exited the room at a greater speed than most able-bodied men would have managed.

'What was he doing?'

'We weren't making out, James.' Wilson's eyes darkened and I decided that it was definitely too soon to be messing with him. 'He was checking my meds.'

'What has he got you on?' James reached over and I handed him the chart, which he flipped the pages on until he got to the back.

He stared at the last page, the one House had made notes on just a minute earlier, before stepping back to the doorway and leaning out of it.

'HOUSE! GET BACK HERE!'

I leaned back on my pillows, closing my eyes and suddenly wishing I was back in my coma, not least so I didn't have to listen to the two of them arguing.

'You rang, Wilson?' It emerged that House hadn't gone too far- he must have barely been ten feet up the hall- because he came back into the room only a few seconds after James had bellowed at him.

'What the hell is this? You're discharging her on Thursday?'

'She should be fine by then.'

'She's had brain surgery!'

'Yes, but unlike most patients she won't be going home to an imbecile- she's got a fully qualified head-of-a-department to dote on her and make sure she's recovering.'

'That's three nights! Protocol dictates that any patient who's undergone brain surgery has to stay in the hospital for seven days _minimum_, just to make sure that all of their higher functions are intact!'

'Tell you what; you can borrow my neurologist for the weekend, if you want. I'm pretty sure he can do all the higher function tests on Ryan while she's in a comfortable bed.'

'Foreman isn't going to-'

'What? Do as I, his boss, command him and attend to a patient in her home?'

James fell silent.

'Look, if she was any other patient I would keep her here all week. But she's not. She's got you, me, Cuddy, and the rest of my team on-call around the clock.'

'My apartment is not a hospital, House.'

'I know. Which is why I'd rather send her there. Ever notice what kind of people hang around a hospital? Always the sick ones. I know I'd rather be away from a bunch of sick people while I'm recovering from brain surgery.'

'Ahem.'

The two of them whipped around, seeming to have forgotten that I was even in the room.

'I'd like to go home, James. House is right- the chance of me getting an infection is a hell of a lot lower at the apartment than it is here... unless you put me in a clean room.'

James sighed, resigned.

'Fine. But not until Thursday, I want that wound healed and your stitches clean before you get discharged.'

'Excellent. Who wants dinner?' House snatched his cane up from where he had rested it on the end of my bed and waved it at me.

'You do _not_ want to eat the trash they serve patients here. Thai okay?'

'Sounds good to me. What time is it?'

'Just after seven.' James responded, checking his beeper and seeming distracted.

'Great. I'll go get some takeout and meet you back here in half an hour.'

'Uh huh...' Yep, definitely distracted.

The two of them exited the room, James now dialling a number on his cell phone as they strode down the hall. I twisted until I could see my bedside table and spotted the TV remote sitting there, snatched it up and flicked the set on, changing the channel to CNN and settling back on my pillows to catch up on what had happened in the rest of the world while I had been comatose.


	5. Chapter 14

---

This is the first *new* chapter of the re-write.

---

Thursday afternoon came around quickly, and it was just after lunch when a nurse came in to remove my bandages. James insisted on checking my wound personally, grinning and telling me that my hair was growing back at a rapid rate, and it looked like it was healed enough for him to be happy for me to come home that night.

House was still in James' bad books, which meant that he was excluded from the group of people who escorted me out of the building- Thirteen insisted on being the one to push my chair- over the last few days we had gotten to know each other. As soon as she'd discovered that I was Wilson's daughter her frigid attitude had become much warmer, and we'd spent the Wednesday afternoon talking, never touching anything serious and skating on the surface with inconsequential and light-hearted topics while we shared a few chocolate bars and a cup of coffee.

I got the distinct impression, as she left, that she had been sizing me up somewhat.

House managed to sneak into my room at least half a dozen times, and all but twice he got caught by James. I was pretty certain that James had asked the nurses to keep an eye on me and report in every time House came in unescorted.

The only time that he managed more than ten minutes in my room alone was when he came in just as the shifts changed at eleven PM on the Wednesday night, sneaking past the nurse's station while they were doing handover and planting himself firmly on the edge of my bed.

'James is going to flip out if he finds out you snuck in here.' I told him, eyes still closed. I'd heard his step-thump as he came into the room, and he'd dropped his cane onto the other side of my bed as he sat down on my non-IV side.

'Didn't I point out that flipping out is a prerequisite to being a parent?'

'I believe you did. What are you doing here, House?'

'So I'm House now, am I?'

'When you wake me up from a good dream, you're House.'

'A good dream?'

'There were marshmallows.'

I opened my eyes and found him staring at me, a slight smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.

'Did you shave?' I asked, reaching up to run my fingers along his jaw.

He leaned his face into the touch, closed his eyes and inhaled deeply so I extended my hand, sliding my palm up so that my thumb touched his ear.

'What are you doing here, Greg?'

'I wanted to see you.'

'You're willing to risk the wrath of my father just to see me?'

'Why do you think I pulled a ninja act to sneak past the nurses? He's not going to find out that I was up here.'

'You're certain that I won't tell him?'

'You like me too much to see me go through that kind of hell.'

He reached up to where my palm was still pressed against his cheek and threaded his fingers through mine, twisting his head and pressing his lips to the back of my hand, his blue eyes boring into me.

'You promised me that after a week we could talk.'

'I assumed that I'd be conscious through that week.'

'So do you need an extra thirty-six hours to make up for the time lost while you were comatose?'

'House...'

'Come on, Ryan, you can't just leave me hanging. Besides, I cured your coma. Surely I get some kind of reward for that?'

'Well, when you put it like that, I'm pretty hard pressed to refuse you, aren't I?'

'I am both brilliant and devious.' He shifted his weight and leaned down over me, my non-drip hand still caught in his. 'It's one of my more appealing traits.' he murmured in my ear, before grazing my cheek with his lips.

I tried, unsuccessfully, to repress a shudder and I felt him grin against my skin as my arms broke out in goose bumps. I felt my heart rate quicken as my breathing shallowed and I knew that he'd noticed, too.

'Definitely _not_ scared...' he said, pressing his mouth to my jaw with a little more insistence.

'No, not scared...' I whispered back. 'But the nurses might get a bit edgy if my heart rate goes much higher.'

'Well I guess I can't let that happen, then.'

His mouth was getting more insistent; he dragged his lips from my ear down my jaw before pressing them against mine.

I took a deep breath as he kissed me, willing my heart rate to slow down. The fact that he still found me attractive while my head was wrapped in bandages was an amazing ego boost, but the recent surgery and wires attached to me meant that there would be a readout produced for my attending physician (Dr House might have been my attending, but Cuddy had been doing most of the real work since James had put himself firmly between myself and Greg) and I didn't want to have to try and explain the rapid heart rate and apparent hyperventilation to a disapproving Lisa in the morning.

'You know... you can always tell them that you had a nightmare or something...' he murmured against my cheek.

'Yeah, having nightmares after brain surgery is going to make them want to discharge me.' I told him as his mouth moved down my neck. It was hard to keep my brain engaged when he was doing what he was, but I was trying my damndest.

It only took the nurses twenty minutes to notice what he was up to, fortunately he'd retired to the chair next to my bed and we had resumed a friendly banter by the time one of them came into my room. His fingers were still threaded between mine as we spoke, but he whipped his hand away from mine and got to his feet as the door slid open.

'Well, Ryan, I better be going. See you tomorrow night?'

'You'd better check with my Dad before you just show up on our doorstep- I don't think he's above smacking you one just because you walk with a cane.'

'I'll keep that in mind.' He bent down, ignoring the nurse on the other side of my bed, and kissed me gently on the cheek.

'You've got my pager number if he gets too hard to live with.' he murmured in my ear as he did so.

'I'll keep that in mind.'

He kissed my cheek again before he limped out of the room and I lay there staring at the spot where I had lost sight of him until I fell asleep.


	6. Chapter 15

The following afternoon I was sitting forward in bed, James and Lisa were both inspecting the wound on the top of my scalp.

'Just leave them in there, it'll heal better.'

'I know, I know. I just wanted to make sure that none of them had dissolved yet.'

'They're fine, Foreman stitched her up himself.'

I tried to tune them out by counting the squares on my blanket, but when they were each bickering with their faces a few inches away from my head it was kind of difficult to ignore them.

I looked up and through the glass wall of my room, and found a pair of piercing blue eyes staring back at me through a gap in the curtains. Every few seconds his gaze flickered upwards to where my father and Dr Cuddy were standing behind me and after a couple of not-too-subtle checks to make sure they were truly engrossed in an examination of my skull his eyes bored into me for a few seconds before he delivered a strong, knowing wink and straightened up, gesturing with his cane to something on the floor next to my bed.

I shifted my gaze to what he had indicated and saw a post-it note attached to the sole of James' shoe. It was green and face down, obviously the sticky part was what kept it attached to the sole of the brown loafer.

'What is that?' I asked, pointing to the note.

'What?' James looked down, his gloved hands still parting my hair for Lisa to inspect my wound.

'There's a post-it on your shoe.'

'Oh. Okay.' He returned to his examination, having nodded slightly in acknowledgment of the sticker.

A minute later they had finished checking my head and let me lean back, James snapped his examination gloves off and pulled the post-it off his foot, glanced at it and grinned, before showing it to Lisa.

'What the hell is that about?'

'No idea.' James confessed, flicking it back around to read it again.

'What does it say?' I asked, reaching for the note.

He handed it to me, somewhat reluctant.

_don't forget to check her overnights_

'This is House's writing, isn't it?'

'Yes, it is.' James told me, turning to check my heart rate monitor. He pressed a few buttons on the LCD and frowned at the readout. 'There's a spike here, around eleven PM. What happened?' he asked, spinning the screen so that I could see the readout.

'I think I was asleep.' I told them, squinting at the squiggly lines on the screen. I could hardly believe it- House had deliberately told them to look at the one thing I thought they had forgotten, the one thing that could get him caught out.

'Could have been a nightmare.' Lisa put in over my shoulder. I felt myself relax, something neither of them noticed, thankfully.

'Looks like it... if you were asleep then a nightmare could explain the heart rate spike. Do you remember having any bad dreams?'

'I never remember my dreams.' I told them, not having to lie.

'House is insane, you know that. He probably just wants us to keep her here a few more days so he has time to plot a way to get you out of his hair. There's nothing there, James.'

'I know...'

'Don't let him get to you.'

'Dad, I want to go home today. Don't let him get to you.'

'Did he say anything to you?' James was concerned. He'd crumpled the paper up and tossed it into the trash can in the corner before taking a seat on the edge of my bed.

'Not that I recall. Besides, you've been monitoring all our interactions for the last week- if he had said anything I'm pretty sure you would have been witness to it.'

He nodded, realising how stupid his question had been and reached for my chart, making some notes on it and handing it to Lisa who signed it with a flourish.

'You are officially discharged. Want to get some real clothes on?'

'Well, these gowns are extremely flattering, but I prefer jeans. Where are my clothes?'

'I got the ones you asked for, I think. They're in your bathroom.'

'Excellent. Get this drip out of me and we can be home in time for dinner.'

---

That evening Lisa, James and I were sitting around the dining table eating chicken pasta. Every few minutes I reached up to touch my bald patch, still self-conscious about the hair missing from the crown of my head. Lisa assured me that it was hardly noticeable, and that if I pulled my hair back directly from my forehead that a ponytail would hide it completely.

It wasn't hiding the bald patch that worried me, more the fact that it was there in the first place. The two of them had been explicit in their explanation of what had happened, and James had assured me that all the bad cells had been removed and that I wouldn't need any radiation or chemotherapy.

I admitted that it was a relief to not worry about losing the rest of my hair, but the fact that I'd had a growth in my brain that had caused me to drop into a come for a day and a half was still disconcerting.

Dinner was a relatively silent affair, Lisa left at around half past nine and the two of us settled on the sofa to watch Greys' Anatomy.

---

House

---

The question, in my mind, was how to get Wilson out of the house without raising suspicion. He'd deliberately cleared his schedule so that he could be at home from the Thursday until the following Monday- the only thing that would get him out of that house without taking Ryan was an emergency with one of his oncology patients.

Lady luck rarely smiles on me, but this evening she decided to be benevolent.

I was hiding out near the intake desk, reading a copy of the latest Batman comic when Wilson blew through the doors at such high speed that he didn't even notice me.

Three minutes later I was on my motorcycle and heading towards Wilson's place.

____

Thanks to all of you who've put me on your story alert list! Very exciting to be back in the *zone*.

Any reviews are appreciated and also have an awesome side-effect- I will not only thank you by username (if you're logged in when you review) but if you have ANY suggestions for story direction, character development or requests for longer/shorter chapters.

Love all my readers!!

--Anna.


	7. Chapter 16

Chapter Sixteen

*don't forget to review!!*

---

Wilson

---

For the first few seconds of the phone call I was suspicious, thinking that there was a distinct possibility that House had set this up.

The panic in the nurse's voice went a long way to convincing me that the emergency was genuine, and the fact that she assured me Dr House was long gone for the night got me off the sofa. I changed quickly out of my sweats and into a pair of jeans, kissing the top of Ryan's head as I swiped my car keys up and dug my ID out of my lab coat and making for the door.

---

Ryan

---

*_ding-dong *_

I didn't even have to use the peephole to know who was behind the door.

'He's going to kill you.' I told him as I got up to open it, dropping what I had been holding onto the coffee table.

'He's not going to find out.' House muttered back.

'Did you-' I paused mid-sentence, and opened the door to look up at him. 'Did you call him? Fake an emergency?'

'Would you believe me if I said no?'

'Probably not. But I also know that you wouldn't risk it, because as soon as he got to the hospital and found no emergency he'd be back here.'

'Which means...'He left the sentence hanging, spinning his cane as he put his weight onto his good leg.

'Which means that it's a genuine emergency, or you wouldn't be here- because you know that he's not going to be back for a while?'

'Precisely. Now, are you going to invite me in, or do I have to hit you with my cane?'

'That's an empty threat and we both know it.'

There was a standoff for a minute or two before I relented, stepping back and letting him into the apartment and closing the door behind him.

He dropped his helmet onto the floor and glanced around the lounge but stopped short when he spotted the clippers on the coffee table.

'I'm thinking about shaving it all off.' I said, as matter-of-fact as I could be.

'Oh, please don't.' He turned back to face me, as he did I realised that I had left myself very little wriggle room between the coat rack, door and wall.

'Why not? Half of it's missing already.'

He stepped forward, half-menacing.

'Don't cut all of it off, just get it fixed up. I'm sure Jimmy knows a good stylist, look at his gorgeous tresses.'

'What about your barber?'

'Who says I go to a barber? This is au naturale.'

'That explains a lot.' I went to sidestep but he caught me, his arm snaking out so fast I barely saw it before he was gripping my forearm.

'Don't shave it off. He sees cancer patients with no hair all the time, on you it might be a bit much.'

'Is that _genuine concern_ I hear in the voice of the infamously uncaring Dr Greg House?'

'Come off it, you know that I don't want him upset.'

'So why did you sneak over here tonight.'

'For the rush... I feel like a teenager, sneaking into my girlfriends' house while her daddy is at work, knowing he could catch us any minute...' His voice dropped on the word 'daddy' and he moved closer, the hand sliding up my arm.

I had to admit, it was rather intoxicating, the thrill of the risks we were running was something I hadn't felt since I had moved out of Grandma's apartment in Washington Heights.

Still, the hunger in the kiss he planted on me was somewhat unexpected. He was pressing his mouth to mine, almost desperately, he reached over my shoulder to hang his cane from the coat-rack, freeing up his hand to join the other caressing my neck.

My response was instinctive, I ran my own hands up his arms to his wrists, clinging for dear life as I tried not to moan aloud into his mouth.

By god, he was amazing. Three seconds and he had me weak-kneed, grasping at him and trying not to call his name to the heavens.

He took a step back after a minute, taking a deep breath and grasping both sides of my face.

'We have to keep this a secret, at least for a while.' he told me, his bright blue eyes piercing into mine.

'I know, James would kill you and Lisa-'

'Would spend twenty minutes defibrillating me just so that she could kill me, too.' He chuckled, deep in his throat, making my laugh a little, too, until his lips pressed to the juncture of my neck and jaw and his mouth ran down my neck to the collar of my t-shirt.

'Too many clothes...' he murmured against my clavicle, sliding a finger under the shirt and tugging the collar down to allow himself access to more flesh.

'Not here, not against the front door, if he comes home-'

'It would be better for him to find me in your bed?' he asked, his mouth back on my neck, the fingers of his right hand still tugging at my collar.

'The thought is, if you are in my room and my door is shut-' I broke off to gasp as his left hand slid over my shoulder to cup a breast, his thumb flicking over a suddenly hard nipple. '-if the door is shut he's likely to leave me sleeping and not come in. Where did you park your bike?'

'Around the far corner, he won't see it. Pass me my cane- can't leave any evidence.'

He clearly wasn't in a hurry for us to remove ourselves from the front door, it took another five minutes before he would release me so that I could turn and grab his cane and the helmet he had dropped just inside the door, then another five agonising minutes to walk him down the hall and into my room.

I pushed him onto my bed, which he hit with a soft laugh, turned and closed my door, flicking the lock and checking it by twisting the handle.

'He won't panic when he can't get in here to check on you?'

'Unlike you, he respects my privacy. He'll call through the door anyway; the lock is just a precaution. Turn your phone off.'

'Huh?' I seemed to have confused him with the sudden change of topic.

'If he tries to call you and your phone starts ringing in _my_ bedroom, he'll go postal and probably break the door down, so turn it off. He can get screened by your machine.'

House stood up and extracted his phone from a pocket in his jeans, flipped it open and switched it off, setting it down on my nightstand.

'Any other rules, Dr Dalton?'

'Not unless you would like to specify some, Dr House.'

'Good.' He reached over and caught my hand in his, jerking me towards the bed and catching me around the waist, kissing me again, slipping one hand beneath my t-shirt to caress my stomach, his movements slow and deliberate, a complete contrast to the hunger and desperation he had conveyed in the few frantic minutes near the front door.

I slowly let myself be pulled into a deep euphoria, drowning in the bright blue pools of his eyes as I drank in the feel of his hands on my skin, the taste of his lips against mine, his distinct musky smell and the low rumblings as he moaned my name quietly all combining like a magnificent drug, lulling me into a complete sense of security and beauty.

---

The front door closed quietly, but I was sleeping so lightly that a mouse sneezing would probably have woken me up. I glanced at my clock radio- two AM- and realised that James had been gone for well over three hours.

'Ryan? You still awake?' he whispered from the other side of the door. He tapped on it twice, softly, but I stayed quiet, still as a stone, willing him to believe that I had just gone to bed, hoping that House had hidden his bike well enough that James hadn't spotted it.

'Guess I'll see you in the morning.' I heard him murmur, before the distinct click of his door closing echoed up the hallway.

I settled back down, rolling my head slightly and feeling House's chest hair tickling against my cheek. I looked up and found him awake also, looking down at me with a wicked smile.

'Your plan worked, Dalton. How long until he's asleep enough for me to sneak out?' His chest vibrated beneath my chin as he spoke, low and gravelly.

'You know, it would probably be safer for you to wait until morning...'

'Until he's in the shower or something?'

'That could work...'

'I can't stay here, Ryan.' He looked sad as he said that, but determined, too. 'It's too risky. I should have left before he got back.'

'I know, I know. His door is closed. That makes things easier.'

'Much.'

'Look, give him twenty minutes to get to sleep, then I'll go to the bathroom and you can pull your great escape while the pipes are banging.'

'Good plan. Slight problem.'

'Problem?'

'I don't know where my pants are.'

---

Thank-you, thank-you to all my readers! Seeing all the traffic on my stories is inspiring, to say the least.

Now, we have a dilemma!

Does House make it out without Wilson catching him?

If Wilson *does* catch him, can House lie effectively enough to convince him that he and Ryan didn't sleep together?

Perhaps I should leave it up to my readers to decide?

Don't forget to review!!


	8. Chapter 17

First things first- thank you _so_ much to all my readers/reviewers and people who have added me to their alert lists!!

JiraiyasGirl - I completely agree about Wilson needing to get over it already- Ryan _is_ 27, but he's still stuck in *overprotective daddy* mode. Give him a week or so and he might realise how ridiculous he's being. He's gone from not knowing he is a parent to discovering he has an adult child, he's got to fit almost thirty years of parenting into a few weeks.

Hopkins0 – thank you so much for your lovely comments, Google Translator was able to tell me what I couldn't read with my rudimentary French abilities, vos commentaires me garder belle inspiration pour écrire plus. (I hope that's legible, I haven't taken French in five years...)

Heyitsme2003 – I'm trying to update as frequently as I can, which is turning out to be almost daily. Only problem- inspiration has a nasty habit of striking at midnight ish...

Apo24 – Here's your next instalment!

Chapter 17.

He made it out.

Just.

I was coming out of the bathroom, having flushed the toilet and run the water for long enough to disguise Greg's footsteps and the sound of the front door opening and closing, when James' door opened. He emerged, in his pyjamas, wide-eyed with concern. I glanced down the hall and saw that the front door was closed, and no sign of House.

'Oh, you're home!' I stopped short in the hall, rearranging my pyjamas as I closed the bathroom door behind me.

'Yeah, I just got in.'

'How's your patient?'

'She's okay now, we got her on the right combination of anti-rejection drugs and she's stable again.'

'Sounds like a good outcome.' I yawned, covering my mouth and trying not to smile. 'I think I'm going to head back to bed. You want me to let you sleep in tomorrow?'

'That would be great.' He yawned as well and retreated into his bedroom, leaving his door open a few inches. I went into my own room and flopped down on the bed, sighing deeply, relieved. Sleep didn't take long to find me.

---

House

---

I walked my bike two blocks before I started it, clipping my cane onto the side and turning the ignition.

What the hell was the matter with me?

She's Wilson's daughter! What the hell was I doing, sleeping with her? It would only be a matter of time before everyone in the damn hospital knew what was going on, and I'd be painted as the bad guy- the big bad wolf who preys on his best friends' daughter.

My vision cleared and I realised that I was on a main road, drifting across the centre line and jerked my bike back onto the correct side of the street, trying to not think about the fact that it was almost two AM and I had just sneaked out of an apartment that, on any other night, I would have made as much noise as possible while exiting.

I pulled up to the kerb outside my apartment, and sat on the bike for a few minutes, trying to make the fog that was occupying my brain dissipate.

It had been a long time since I'd had feelings like this for anyone- it was almost like what I'd felt with Stacy, not as strong, not as insistent, and certainly not as irritating, but definitely similar.

It was nothing like what I felt, still feel, for Cuddy. She's more like a challenge, the insurmountable and untouchable object that I like to glance at from time to time, just to make sure that it's still as impossible to think about as always.

Was the fact that she's Wilson's daughter making this feel like more than it was?

Sure, the thrill of the chance that we could get caught, and the way Wilson (and Cuddy, come to think of it) would react, already were reacting, made it that much more appealing to pursue contact with this girl.

Her audacity at putting Cuddy's name on the clinic form had caught my attention, and her refusal to take any crap from me had cemented a strange sort of respect. When she'd shown no pity for me, a rare thing, I'd found that I liked her.

The fact that she is not too bad to look at is a complete bonus, or at least I'm going to keep telling myself that.

I stumbled into the apartment, glancing at my piano before taking a seat on the sofa instead, reclining and considering turning on my TiVo to see what I'd missed. I popped a Vicodin while staring at the black screen and before I could reach for the remote, fell asleep.

---

I spent the next few days in hiding. If I wasn't at home watching repeats of the New Yankee Workshop I was at the clinic, whiling the hours away on my PSP. I got two phone calls in that time, one from Wilson-which I let go to voicemail- inviting me to Sunday dinner, and one from Cuddy, suspicious about the number of clinic hours I had put in and concerned that I hadn't been to visit Ryan since she'd been discharged.

Unfortunately, for me, she didn't buy the whole 'I'm respecting Wilson's decision to set boundaries' spiel, and offered me a ride to the Sunday dinner.

'I thought Jews had family dinners on Saturdays, after temple?'

'Just get in the car, smartass.'

---

Ryan

---

I knew he'd been avoiding me.

Not that I cared, much. I'd enjoyed the uninterrupted time with my Dad, but had been a little disappointed to not receive any clandestine text messages, or to wake up at two AM to the tap-tap of a cane on my window.

On the Saturday afternoon I suggested a Sunday roast- offering to cook a lamb rack.

'A Sunday roast- I haven't had one of those in years...' James muttered, mulling the suggestion over.

'Roast lamb, baked potatoes, julienne carrots, mint sauce...'

'You got me at potatoes.'

'Can we invite House?'

James looked at me, hard, for a few seconds, before one side of his mouth quirked.

'I think we've had him in time-out for long enough. We should invite Lisa, too.'

'Sounds like a plan. Can you drop me off at the mall so that I can get a few things?'

'You're going to get a haircut, aren't you?'

'Now, that would be telling. Drop me off?'

James sighed, got up and went to find his car keys.


	9. Chapter 18

Thank-you to all my awesome reviewers, and those who have added me to their story alert lists!

I know it's been a while since I updated this, but I'm getting back into it between writing my one-shots and the other House/Thirteen story I've got going... and I'm getting married next week- so the honeymoon might cause a bit of an interruption in updates until the end of April.

Reviews are love!!

Chapter 18.

The following afternoon I was occupied in the kitchen when somebody started rapping on the front door.

I was slicing potatoes and didn't have a spare hand to greet whichever guest had elected to arrive early, and as luck would have it, James had left barely two minutes earlier to get some mint sauce from the market- the jar he'd found in his fridge could quite easily have been a 5th grade science project.

I sighed and wiped my hands on the dishtowel I'd hung over my shoulder, crossed the lounge and opened the door.

'House, of course.' I held the door open for him and he hobbled across the threshold, grasping a bottle of red wine in his non-cane hand.

He seemed to stumble slightly, and before I could register what was happening, he'd already finished kissing me and was moving towards the kitchen.

'Lamb roast? Excellent. Love the hair, by the way.' He set the bottle of wine down on the bench before reaching up and hooking his cane onto the crown moulding, leaving it suspended in the middle of the entrance to the kitchen and picking up the knife that I had just put down.

'Roasted or scalloped potatoes?'

'It'll have to be roasted, no cream, no bacon.'

'Where's Daddy?'

'At the market, getting some mint sauce.' I had returned to the kitchen and was leaning against the counter next to where House was chopping the potatoes I had just peeled. He looked up at me and I caught the barest hint of a smirk.

'You could always call and ask for bacon and cream. It'd delay him for at least five minutes.'

'We already agreed on roast-' I began, but House was, once again, too quick. For a man with a pronounced limp he can certainly move like lightning when he wants to. He had me pinned to the bench and reached a hand down, unclipping my cell phone from its' place on my hip and flipping it open.

'Talk.' He had hit the speed dial I had assigned to James, and held the phone up to my ear.

It only rang twice.

'Ryan? Is everything okay?'

'Yeah, James, everything's fine. I was just thinking, we could maybe do scallop potatoes? But we don't have any cream, or bacon. Unless you want to go kosher?'

House rolled his eyes at that last comment, and as James laughed lightly in my ear, Greg leaned forward and pressed his lips to my neck, distracting me completely from whatever James was saying.

'Sorry, what? I think I've got a bad connection here...' I said once James had stopped talking. This time, when he replied, I reached up a hand and planted it over House's mouth, pushing him back as his eyes widened in shock at me. I didn't expect the tactic to last long, and it didn't, but it kept him away from anywhere sensitive for long enough that I could make sense of what James was saying.

'I'll get some cream, and bacon. The line is a mile long, though, so I probably won't be back for a half hour or so.'

'What time was Lisa going to be here?'

'Not til noon. House might be early, though. Just give him a beer and the remote, that'll keep him out of your hair.'

_It's not him getting into my hair that I'm worried about!_ I thought to myself, but managed to give James a real reply, even as Greg had managed to twist his head and was sucking on the tip of one of my fingers.

'I'll keep that in mind. See you when you get back.'

House snapped the phone shut and tossed it over his shoulder, I heard it clatter to the floor somewhere in the lounge room behind him.

'I locked the door behind me...' he murmured, releasing my hand and leaning in to kiss my neck.

'Keep yourself nice until the potatoes are done, Greg.'

'Oh, I'm Greg now, am I?' he was getting insistent, running his hands up my sides, until I clamped down with my elbows to stop them going any higher.

'I'm warning you...'

'Come on, we've got twenty minutes until he gets back...'

'And I want to have these done by then.'

He didn't answer me, just ran his finger through my newly-cropped hair.

'I like what you've done, here. Short suits you.'

I flicked my hair out of my eyes- I'd had it cropped short, a pixie cut with long bangs.

'I've never had it this short before. I kind of like it.'

'It's hiding the bald patch nicely.'

'If only you could get yours styled to hide the grey.'

'Hey, I'm a silver fox. Don't mock the grey.'

'You'd prefer it if I mocked the cane?'

'Fine, fine. Mock the grey. I know you secretly love it.'

I giggled as he tickled my neck with feather-light fingers, pressing his lips to my neck again.

Somehow I managed to keep my brain in the right gear, and finished slicing the potatoes before my mind became a slate wiped clean- magic fingers had untucked my undershirt and he had barely paused in his attentions to my neck and ears.

The distinct sound of the door clicking open made me snap to attention, but House didn't seem to have heard it. He sure noticed when I stilled in his arms, and looked up to see a thunderstruck James standing on the threshold, staring open-mouthed at us.


	10. Chapter 19

Hi all!

I am so sorry that it's taken me this long to update! I got married at the start of April, went on a honeymoon for three weeks, then we moved house! I got my internet back today. So here's chapter 19... at last!

Don't forget to review if you like it!

Chapter 19.

I stared, open-mouthed at my father. House had flipped the phone closed not three minutes earlier. How the _hell_ had he gotten home so fast?

'Hey, Wilson. I thought you were at the market.' House was flippant as ever, one hand still on my back, the other under my shirt and on my lowest ribs.

'I-I realised that I forgot my wallet. I came back to get it. What's going on here?'

'I'm helping with the potatoes.' House still had me pinned to the bench, and hadn't moved his hands.

'House, get your hands off my daughter.' James' voice had dropped an octave. I looked up at Greg's face and saw his eyes narrow ever so slightly. He took a step back from me, disentangling his arms and squared up to face James.

'You know, she is a grown-up, Wilson.' House told him, dropping his chin and looking at James from beneath a heavy set of eyebrows.

I took a step towards James and my movement seemed to set something off in his brain. He advanced on House, his eyes darkened and before I could stop him he delivered a stunner of a right hook directly to Greg's jaw.

'Dad!'  
'OW! What the HELL?' House demanded, a hand on his jaw as he straightened up to glare at James.  
'Get out.' James said, voice low.  
'Dad, James-' I began.  
'Ryan, stay out of this. House, we had an agreement. Get out of my house and stay away from my daughter.'  
'Wilson-'  
'No, House. Out. Now.'

House stared at James for a few seconds, eyes steady, hand still on the spot where James had hit him.

He grabbed his cane and left the apartment, closing the door quietly behind him.

James rounded on me.

'What the _hell,_ Ryan?'  
I stepped back from him and stared at my feet. How did a man I'd known less than a month manage to make me feel so guilty?  
'He arrived early, he was helping with the potatoes. James, we're both consenting adults, you know.'  
'Ryan, he's twice your age!'  
'And from what I've heard, Amber was younger than I am!'  
That shut him up for a moment.

It was a short moment, but it did make him think.

'House is almost ten years older than me. This is ridiculous!'  
'Why is it ridiculous?'  
'He's an _old man_!'  
'And I'm pretty sure that you are, too, James.'

James turned away from me and began pacing through the living room, back and forth, muttering to himself.

'This is, this is _wrong,_ Ryan. He's a narcissist, an addict, a manipulative bastard. I can't let you be involved with someone like House!'  
'Yet it's perfectly fine for you to be friends with him?'  
'I've known him for years, Ryan. I know how to distance myself from him when he starts to drag me down.'  
'From what I've heard, he's the reason your last wife left you.'

That one, I could see, hurt him.

'Julie left because she was having an affair. House had nothing to do with it.'  
'Yeah, right.' I put the knife down, which I had still been clutching this whole time, and stepped past James, picking up the keys for my bike and grabbing my jacket off the chair next to the door.

'Where are you going?'  
'I'm going to find House.'  
'Ryan, I can't let you-'  
'You can't _let me?_ James, you've known me for a _month!_ I might be your daughter but I'm also an adult. If I choose to pursue a relationship with _anyone_ then I hardly think you're the first person I'm going to come to for permission!'

I shrugged into my jacket, grabbed my helmet and slammed the door behind me, practically running towards the exit.


End file.
